McNeil Hendricks (second from left) as Chester Williams, Scott Eastwood (third from left) as Joel Stransky and Matt Damon (center) as Francois Pienaar in
Invictus
A Boot Against Apartheid
Film helps South Africa's most famous "Jew boy" recapture a place in the spotlight.
Steve Lipman
The Jewish Week
oel Stransky is a former athletic
hero whose performance one sto-
ried afternoon 15 years ago helped
Nelson Mandela heal a scarred nation.
A year after his historic, post-apartheid
election as his country's first black presi-
dent, Mandela, the long-imprisoned leader
of the African National Congress, in 1995
did the unthinkable. With the Springboks
rugby team, a mostly white Afrikaans
squad that to blacks was a hated symbol of
apartheid, playing archrival New Zealand
in the World Cup championship game,
Mandela cunningly managed to rally the
country's blacks behind the country's team.
The extraordinary act of political rec-
onciliation in a still racially divided land
is dramatized in Invictus, the new star-
studded film directed by Clint Eastwood,
with Morgan Freeman as Mandela and
Matt Damon as the politically sensi-
tive Springboks captain, the Afrikaaner
Francois Pienaar.
While Stransky, the only Jewish player
on the Springboks, doesn't figure much in
the film, his game-winning kick is given
the Hollywood treatment, thrusting him
back into public view.
The crew's filming on-site in Cape
Town and Johannesburg last spring was a
national event, featuring the American A-
list actors. Stransky and many of the other
one-time Springboks players spent time
with the actors, schooling them in the fine
points of a mostly unfamiliar sport.
Stransky enjoyed his time with the
actors. "I met them all:' he says in a tele-
phone interview from Johannesburg,
where, post-rugby, he works as managing
director of Altech Netstar, a stolen vehicle
recovery business.
Near the end of the film, with the cham-
pionship game tied 12-12 in "extra time
tip
Stransky, wearing No. 10 on his green
Springboks jersey, attempts a drop goal,
similar to a drop kick in American football,
from about 35 yards from the goalposts.
In dramatic slow motion the ball sails in
the air, Stransky and the other players stare,
the scoreboard registers three points for
South Africa, then the Springboks celebrate
when the referee's final whistle blows seven
minutes later.
Invictus shows whites and blacks rejoic-
ing together, but it doesn't show what hap-
pened next.
At the press conference following the
game, Springboks coach Kitch Christie
praised his players for their dedication in
defeating New Zealand's heavily favored
team. In his remarks, he singled out "our
Jew boy;' who scored the tie-breaking points
in overtime and was named Man of the
Match, or player of the game.
Everyone there knew whom Christie was
referring to. Stransky, who is played in the
film by Scott Eastwood, the director's son,
was that afternoon's star, scoring all his
team's points in the 15-12 victory.
Stransky, who took no offense at the
coach's non-PC characterization, saying it
was "a term of endearment': played a cru-
cial role in a game that helped change the
face of South Africa.
"We became heroes overnight': Stransky
says.
In the weeks after the game, Stransky
received several calls from friends wishing
him "Mazel tov!" He was named Maccabi
Sportsman of the Year. Endorsements and
speaking engagements followed the victory.
Especially from Jewish organizations.
"The Jewish community really embraced
me:' Stransky says.
"There was a vicarious pleasure among
Jews in the mainstream community see-
ing a guy with the obviously Jewish name
Stransky do what he did in the World Cup
— particularly a game with the significance
that Mandela gave it',' says Geoff Sifrin, edi-
tor of the South African Jewish Report.
Stransky, 42, who was inducted earlier
this year into the International Jewish Sports
Hall of Fame, is Jewish on his father's side.
He calls himself "a non-practicing Jew," add-
ing, "I'm proud of my heritage."
In rugby circles he is known as the "min-
yan man" because he is the 10th Jew to play
for the Springboks. In South Africa, having
one player with a Jewish background on the
national team is a longstanding tradition.
"There's an old legend among rugby fans
about the Springbok rugby team, dating
from the time of Syd Nomis in the '80s, that
it is always good for a Springbok team to
have at least one Jew on it': says Sifrin."In
a certain way, Stransky fulfilled that role:'
(Nomis still holds the team's record for con-
secutive international matches played.)
At 5-foot-10, Stransky, who took up
rugby at 8 and quickly found success, was
the smallest player on the field during the
championship game. "He had become a key
player by the age of 20 for Natal province,
one of the four biggest teams in South
Africa': John Carlin writes in Playing the
Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game that
Made a Nation (Penguin Press, 2008), the
book on which Invictus is based.
"Stransky occupied the one position in a
rugby team where neither unnatural speed
nor unnatural bulk were required — fly
half. The equivalent in American football
would be the quarterback, the player who
dictates play, in whom brains and ball skill
are paramount. He also kicked like a dream.
"The greatest pressure [in the final] was
on Stransky,' Carlin writes. "Because of the
nature of the position he played, the kicking
job, the spotlight would be more on him
than on any other individual player:'
Other players "could, to a degree, hide
within the grunting hurly-burly of the for-
ward scrum. If they made a mistake, few
outside the team or the sphere of outside
pundits would necessarily notice:'
While Stransky's life may have been
consumed by sports, Carlin writes that
his laser-like focus did not prevent him
from experiencing two fleeting moments
of political awakening. The first was
the 1976 uprising by blacks in Soweto,
Johannesburg's iconic township.
"It was very clear to me from that
moment on that things were messed up in
this country': Carlin quotes Stransky as say-
ing. The second was a televised Springboks
tour of New Zealand in 1981 that brought
steady anti-apartheid demonstrations.
Stransky, Carlin writes, "realized that there
had to be a good reason why half of New
Zealand was outraged by his countrymen:'
By 1995, apartheid was gone, and black
soccer fans were becoming rugby enthusi-
asts. But the country was still raw, even in its
sports preferences. Soccer was long consid-
ered the black sport, rugby the white one.
And the blacks who would attend
Springboks games, sitting in segregated
sections, would cheer for South Africa's
opponents.
But under the banner of "One Team,
One Country' Mandela, alone at first
in the black community, embraced the
Springboks, appearing at the team's games
and practices, and befriending Francois
Pienaar, who came to share the president's
vision of the Springboks as a rallying point
for the nation. At the international level, a
rugby captain plays as strong a role — or
stronger — as the coach in guiding a team.
Pienaar persuaded his teammates of
the championship's symbolic importance
for South African society. The film depicts
Mandela giving Pienaar a copy of "Invictus,"
the president's favorite poem. The poem, by
William Ernest Henley, contains the lines,
repeated in the film, "I am the master of my
fate; I am the captain of my soul:'
A Boot Against on page 33
December 31 • 2009
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