The film Invictus is on one level about the victory of the Springboks in the 1995 Rugby World Cup held in South Africa.
Yet it is actually about how this team, galvanised by the vision of Nelson Mandela, played its part in uniting a nation divided by the long years of apartheid. The film explores what it is to build one people out of a South Africa where on both sides the old prejudices and desire to get even still existed.
Mandela’s task as President was not simply to give more rights and greater equality to the blacks, but to help everyone to see that they were part of a new nation and to live as citizens of the new South Africa not the old one. That involved a dying to the old ways and embracing the new nation.
