Mandela knew the power of sport

He emerged into bright winter sunshine, stepped onto the lush field and pulled on a cap. His long-sleeve green rugby jersey was untucked and buttoned right up to the top, a style all his own.

On the back, a gold No. 6, big and bold.

Within seconds, the chants went up from the fans packed into Ellis Park stadium in the heart of Johannesburg: "Nelson! Nelson! Nelson!"

Nelson Mandela, South Africa's first black president, was wearing the colours of the Springboks and 65,000 white rugby supporters were joyously shouting his name.

It was 1995.

The Rugby World Cup final, the sport's biggest game.

And yet it was much more.

It was nation-defining for South Africa, a transcendent moment in the transformation from apartheid to multi-racial democracy.

The day spawned books and a blockbuster Clint Eastwood movie. It still speaks - nearly 20 years later - to what sport is capable of achieving.

With his cap and a team jersey, Mandela showed an incisive understanding of the role sport plays in millions of lives.

"Sport has the power to change the world," Mandela said.

"It has the power to inspire, it has the power to unite people in a way that little else does."

Mandela died on Friday at the age of 95.

A statesman, he didn't just have brushes with sports, occasional appearances timed only for political gain.

Mandela embraced them wholeheartedly - rugby, football, cricket, boxing, track and field, among others. At one time in his youth, Mandela cut an impressive figure as an amateur boxer.

On June 24, 1995, Mandela and South Africa were triumphant.

And he may just have saved a country by pulling on that green and gold jersey with a prancing antelope on the left breast.

The Springboks were dear to the hearts of South Africa's white Afrikaners and loathed by the nation's black majority.

By donning their emblem, Mandela reconciled a nation fractured and badly damaged by racism and hatred.

"Not in my wildest dreams did I think that Nelson Mandela would pitch up at the final wearing a Springbok on his heart," South Africa's captain on that day, Francois Pienaar, said some time later.

"When he walked into our changing room to say 'good luck' to us, he turned around and my number was on his back. It was just an amazing feeling."

Mandela came out of a 27-year imprisonment at 71.

While he was incarcerated, South Africa were thrown out of the Olympics for over 30 years and only allowed back in after he was released.

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Mandela was pivotal in helping South Africa eventually win the right to host the 2010 World Cup, the first in Africa.

It was perhaps the biggest test of South Africa's progress, of its coming of age, just 16 years into its young democracy. South Africa came through it with high praise, sweeping aside the doubters - as Mandela said his country would.

After South Africa had shocked the top-ranked All Blacks 15-12 to win the 1995 Rugby World Cup, Mandela - still in his jersey - handed the glistening gold trophy to the blonde-haired Pienaar, an ideal picture of the new Rainbow Nation.

"He said to me, 'Thank you for what you have done for South Africa'," Pienaar recalled.

"I said to him, 'No, Madiba, you've got it wrong. Thank you for what you've done for South Africa'. And I felt like hugging him. I really felt like giving him a big hug, but it wasn't protocol... and that just gave me shivers down my spine."

Mandela then raised both his arms in celebration, smiling gleefully with undisguised delight as Pienaar lifted the cup.

"Sport can create hope, where once there was only despair. It is more powerful than governments in breaking down racial barriers. It laughs in the face of all types of discrimination," Mandela said.

And he proved it.

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