Group Think

This is Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedantham. When Nelson Mandela became South Africa's first black president in 1994, he had big dreams for his bitterly divided country. We enter into a covenant that we shall build a society, a rainborn nation, at peace with itself and the world. He had spent a lifetime fighting the racist apartheid regime, including more than a quarter century in prison. He was a heroic figure already by that time, but to many white South Africans they saw him as a criminal and a terrorist.

This is psychologist J. Van Bavil. As president of a United South Africa, Nelson Mandela, or Madiba, as he was known to his supporters, needed to find a way for the people in his rainbow nation to see themselves as South Africans first. Other politicians might have turned to speeches and policies.

Madiba turned to sports. Play continues, upside by New Zealand. He used the Rugby World Cup, which was being hosted in South Africa, and during the apartheid era, South Africa had been banned from competition. And the South African team was known as the Spring Box, and they were beloved by the white South Africans and despised by the black population. But what Mandela did was he went out onto the podium, not just as the president, but as a fan.

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