In 1995, South Africa was still finding its footing in a post-Apartheid world. Newly elected president Nelson Mandela, who was imprisoned for 27 years because of his anti-Apartheid views, used the opportunity of South Africa\u2019s hosting of the Rugby World Cup to start a \u201cOne Team, One Country\u201d campaign. Rugby had been a white sport for generations in predominantly black South Africa, and the national team\u2019s Springbok mascot had come to represent white racial supremacy.<\/p>\n
In front of a mostly white crowd in Johannesburg, South Africa beat New Zealand 15-12 in the final with Nelson in attendance. After the game, wearing the team\u2019s jersey and Springbok mascot, Mandela congratulated the team\u2019s captain, Francois Pienaar, and was widely cheered. It was a remarkable moment for South Africa, which had been banned from all international competitions for decades, including the Olympics and other world championships, because of its Apartheid policies.<\/p>\n
Mandela used the power of sport as best he could to reconcile the racial instability that was still pervasive throughout his country.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
MORE: Back to The Sporting News’ 140 Greatest Sports Moments of All Time<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In 1995, South Africa was still finding its footing in a post-Apartheid world. Newly elected president Nelson Mandela,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":546167,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":["post-546166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=546166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546166\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/546167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=546166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=546166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=546166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}