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The Picture Every World Cup Fan Wants To See: Nelson Mandela Smiling
Published: May 6, 2010
Released in Johannesburg today by the Nelson Mandela Foundation and snapped by Debbie Yazbek, it shows Madiba, the beloved father of the Rainbow Nation, smiling with the World Cup as it arrives in South Africa for a nationwide pre-tournament journey.
For weeks—months—Mandela has been quiet. There were those who said the first democratic president of South Africa at age 91 was too frail to talk when fascist leader Eugene Terreblanche was killed on his farm in Ventersdorp a month ago.
There were those who said Mandela couldn't be trusted to verbally spank African National Congress youth leader Julius Malema when he was winding up the white minority, singing songs about "killing the boer."
But with one image, Mandela is back. Smiling.
And in the space of a toothy grin, the World Cup is on track.
Though President Jacob Zuma has dealt well with pre-tournament problems—he spoke with authority on the sodomy-tainted death of Terreblanche, and slapped down the mischievous Malema with some aplomb—it is the voice of Mandela which is trusted here by black, white, brown, and blue.
He is the man whose release stirred the world, the superhero who emerged from 27 years of imprisonment to guide the country through its first democratic elections in 1994, the father of freedom who inspired Clint Eastwood's Oscar-nominated Invictus is BACK.
I was told some months ago that FIFA has a contingency plan in place in the event of Rolihlahla Mandela's death before the start of the World Cup on June 11. It involves him lying in state in Pretoria, like a latter-day pharaoh, ready for eternal adoration.
We feared for his faculties, but we all knew it was Mandela who persuaded Sepp Blatter, FIFA, and the football-speaking world to bring the World Cup to Africa for the first time this...
Article Source: Bleacher Report - International Football
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