BLOEMFONTEIN, SOUTH AFRICA It was as clear as the film s most famous scene: The work

of reconciliation in South Africa is not done yet. In February 2008, a video ap

peared online showing four white students from South Africa s University of the Fr
ee State (UFS) hazing their black janitors as if they were new freshmen. There s a
beer-drinking contest, a footrace to Chariots of Fire. Near the end, the boys app
ear to pee into bowls of stew and urge the janitors to eat up. It was supposed t
o be an in-house joke, a protest against a plan to integrate their dorm, a stude
nt residence called Reitz. But one of the Reitz boys gave it to his girlfriend,
then dumped her--that classic error of the Internet age--and she vengefully post
ed it on YouTube, where it drew one million viewers. For months, South Africa co
uldn t look away. It was the same urge we have to touch a bruise even though it hu
rts. The video seemed like a flare-up indicating a deeper national disease.
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It may be hard to hear over the World Cup plastic trumpets, but there are whispe
rs here that the aftermath of apartheid isn t working out as planned. Clint Eastwo
od s recent movie Invictusreintroduced Americans to the South Africa that was supp
osed to be: Mandela, played by Morgan Freeman, walks onto the field in front of
a virtually all-white crowd at the 1995 Rugby World Cup in Johannesburg--a year
after South Africa s first democratic election--wearing the green-and-gold jersey
of the team that had long symbolized Afrikaner aggression and power, figurativel
y embracing his former jailers and establishing the template for national unity.
But the reality looks a little different. The weekend Invictus opened on some 2
,000 screens, the 29-year-old heir apparent to Mandela s African National Congre