I lived in South Africa during the 1995 Rugby World Cup, and what happened that year was quite astonishing...not so much that the Springboks won (though after decades of being banned from international competition, that was quite a feat), but the way that Mandela went out on the field at Ellis Park wearing a Springboks jersey--until then one of the most representative symbols of apartheid--and saluted the team after they beat the NZ All Blacks (generally considered the top team in the world at the time) was remarkable. It may have just been a rugby match, but the symbolism was enormous. Just the previous year, crazy right wing Afrikaners were trying to sabotage the election and assassinate ANC leaders in downtown Johannesburg. The country was by no means a kumbaya paradise after 1995, but Mandela managed to convince an awful lot of whites that they had a future that didn't involve being hunted down and massacred.
