30 years on from that World Cup, how rugby changed South Africa

A South African school recently organised a 'wear your profession day', asking pupils to dress for the jobs they wanted to do as grown-ups. Some wore white medical coats or pretend pilot hats. One wielded a tennis racket. But the majority of the racially diverse children arrived in the green and gold attire of their heroes, the Springboks, the national rugby team.
'I've been to schools all over the world but I've never seen rugby and sport permeating a school's life as much as it does in South Africa,' said Grant Butler, headmaster of Grey Junior School in the Eastern Cape. As he spoke, the joyful chaos of a nine-year-olds' match spilt in through the window — shouts of children and cheers from proud parents.
In this country forged through political struggle and extraordinary resilience, rugby has become much more than a sport. Many people here call it the cornerstone of post-apartheid South Africa.
On Tuesday the country celebrates the 30th anniversary of its first victory in the rugby World Cup in 1995 when, just a year after being sworn in as the country's first black president, Nelson Mandela famously donned the Springbok rugby jersey, in those days a symbol of white, Afrikaner pride that was loathed by the black majority — black people generally did not play rugby.
Mandela's embrace of the game was more than political theatre. He wanted the nation to follow his example, binding around a once-hated white team in pursuit of reconciliation. How he seized on the oval ball as a tool of nation-building is a remarkable tale of courage, hope and magnanimity told in the Hollywood film Invictus (2009) directed by Clint Eastwood with Morgan Freeman as Mandela and Matt Damon as the Afrikaner Springbok captain, Francois Pienaar.
'Mandela told me that in order to really persuade, you had to appeal not to people's minds but to their hearts,' said John Carlin, author of Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game that Made a Nation, on which the Hollywood film was based. 'The World Cup in 1995 was the first time the country came together. Blacks and whites were united in one common purpose and goal, winning the World Cup. On the day of the final, racial divisions just dissolved.'
'To do what Mandela did took a lot of guts,' said Kobus Wiese, who was a second row forward in the famous final against New Zealand and is now a television rugby commentator. 'He reached out to tell us, the common men, that, 'If I the president can do this, there's no reason for you not to do it. We can have our differences but we can overcome them as well.''
In 1995 the country had only just emerged from international isolation after the lifting of apartheid and the Springboks were the underdogs in the final. 'The country had just come back from the brink of civil war, we had fallen behind for many years with our training techniques, we weren't given any chance by anyone,' said Wiese, 61, a tractor-sized figure with a shock of white hair.
His first sense that rugby was more than just a game came on the day a helicopter touched down on the training field and Mandela stepped out.
'We thought, 'What the hell is this?'' Wiese recalled in a café run by his wife in Franschhoek, a picturesque town in the winelands east of Cape Town: whenever black South Africans had come to Springbok games in the past it was generally to cheer for their opponents.
Mandela, who spent 27 years in prison for his role in resisting apartheid and leading the armed struggle against white minority rule, meekly apologised for disturbing the players. 'He said, 'I know you are busy preparing for the World Cup but I was wondering if I could spend a bit of time with you?'' Wiese said.
They went into the clubhouse for tea and sandwiches. 'Mandela wanted to find out more about rugby and the World Cup and what we thought our chances were. Then he said, 'It's very important that we do well.' He kept saying it, 'It's very important for more than the game of rugby.''
Such was Mandela's aura and influence that the entire country was soon rallying around the Springboks. 'As we progressed through the games, in the hotels, people in the streets, people walking up to you, the lady cleaning your room in the hotel, they were all massively involved in supporting you, it was incredible.'
After the victory Mandela, still wearing his Springbok gear, famously handed the cup to Pienaar, saying: 'Thank you very much for what you have done for our country.' Pienaar replied: 'Mr President, it is nothing compared to what you have done for our country.'
Desmond Tutu, the archbishop who had played a key role in ending apartheid, called it 'quite incredible, quite unbelievable. It had the effect of just … turning around the country. It was … an extraordinary thing — it said, 'Yes, it is possible for us to become one nation.''
The vast majority of the 63,000 people in Johannesburg's Ellis Park stadium were white, most of them Afrikaners. They had been conditioned to believe their president was a terrorist but rose to their feet when they saw him after the match to chant his name in thunderous admiration: 'Nelson! Nelson! Nelson!'
'We didn't have the support of 63,000 South Africans today. We had the support of 42 million,' was how Pienaar put it.
Thirty years on, the spirit of 1995 endures. A national rugby obsession has fuelled three more World Cup victories. 'Rugby, and more generally sport, is a beacon of hope for our country, it gets us through tough times,' said Joel Stransky, the Springbok fly-half who scored all of the 15 points in the 1995 final, including the decisive drop goal that won the match in extra time six minutes before the whistle.
He remembered Mandela, a former professional boxer, coming into the changing room before the game. He again apologised for disturbing the players while they were 'focused' on the task ahead. 'Then he wished us all luck individually. That was the Mandela magic. We felt touched by his magic, his kindness and leadership. It was extraordinary to see how he had survived all that time in jail with forgiveness in his heart.'
Mandela would be proud of today's Springboks, Stransky believes. They include several black players, including the captain, Siya Kolisi, who married Rachel Smith, a white events organiser with whom he had two children. The couple separated last year but, for a while, at least, seemed an embodiment of the 'rainbow nation', or racial harmony dreamed of by Mandela.
The former president died in 2013, but rugby continues to bring people together — particularly after big World Cup victories when crowds of black and white revellers sing, dance together and wave South African flags while wearing the green and gold of their heroes.
The bonhomie around rugby, though, is not limited to World Cup victories. 'Rugby is the language a lot of South Africans speak these days, it's the language of unity,' Butler said. His school is where Kolisi learned to play rugby on a scholarship, perhaps explaining why so many pupils want to be Springboks.
Any day the national rugby team is playing is known as 'Bok Day' when, across the racial, social and economic lines, schools and businesses relax dress codes, encouraging people to wear green and gold gear and braais, or barbecues, are fired up across the country. On such days much of Port Elizabeth, a renowned rugby hub, is decked in green and gold.
'You can be standing in the queue to buy a chicken at Woolworths and you'll strike up a conversation with someone from a very different cultural background to yourself, you're wearing the same colours,' Butler said. 'For that wonderful moment, you are facing in the same direction and supporting the same group of people. It's a wonderfully unifying thing.'
Despite rugby's unifying power, viewing habits reflect a deep economic divide. Most white fans watch on pay television while black audiences rely on free state television broadcasts, where they made up 58 per cent of viewers in 2017, according to one survey, compared to just 3 per cent on pay television. Yet in stadiums, a growing and more diverse crowd signals slow but real change.
In many ways, though, Mandela's dreams for the country remain unfulfilled.
Politicians today are always eager to step into the glow of Springbok triumphs but Wiese, the second row forward, hopes they stay away from the anniversary gala dinner he and other members of the 1995 World Cup final line-up will attend on Tuesday at Ellis Park, the scene of their triumph three decades ago.
The former player said Mandela and his allies in the anti-apartheid struggle would 'roll over in their graves' at the corruption among their successors in the ANC, the former liberation movement turned political party. He quoted Oliver Tambo, a close friend of Mandela: 'He said when politicians start driving Mercedes and living in huge mansions, they've lost the plot because then they are not working for the people. And I agree 100 per cent.'
Flawed as it is, South Africa today stands in stark contrast to the legally enforced inhumanity Mandela helped to dismantle.
Ryan Christianson, 51, the son of an Indian mother and white South African father, believes he may have been the first non-white boy to play rugby after being sent to a white school in the Eastern Cape in the 1980s. His parents had been barred from living together under an apartheid-era 'Immorality Act', which prohibited sexual relations between white people and those of other races.
'I'd come off the field black and blue, the other kids would target you in the scrum because of your skin colour,' he said. 'They were born into racism.' With Mandela, the nation changed.
'Suddenly non-white people believed that rugby was theirs. Recent World Cup victories with a black captain lifting the cup have shown a nation of non-white players emerging and saying this is our sport now too.'
Christianson is now the fundraising manager at Cape Town's Masiphumelele Pumas Rugby Club which includes white, black and so-called 'coloured' (mixed race) players from all walks of life. He recently secured £20,000 in funding from wealthy white donors to install floodlights at the club's field.
'Mandela taught us that unity is possible. Rugby showed us what it looked like,' he said. 'Now we have to live it.'

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