The African National Congress (ANC) began to lead a revolution among the majority of blacks. In May 1994, four years after being released from prison, Nelson Mandela stood before his nation as the first democratically announced president, but beneath the hopes surrounding his rise, the remnants of decades of apartheid were dangerously moulded, his country , still divided, were on the brinks of implosion. Nelson Mandela became an international symbol for the party and through years of turmoil he began to steer the nation away from the grim clutches of apartheid that left the nation in social ruining.
Mandela knew it would take an act of brilliance to unite the country after years of forced segregation, and in 1995 he was about to bring mass and social change through the brilliance of sport but in the most unlikely way, he would use the Spring Bokks, the national rugby team and almost a religion to white South Africans, to unite the country. Mandela’s call to use the spring bokks in such circumstance was met with huge opposition, especially among his black followers, but Mandela took a huge risk, a risk that saw him encourage the rugby team and the entire races within the country to come together as one.
His vision of uniting the rainbow nation through the rugby team on the world stage was a definitive act of social change and harmony within the republic of South Africa, an act that demolished racism.
Since the Spring Boks and South Africa won the 1995 rugby world cup final, they also hosted the 1996 African Nation’s soccer tournament and were again victorius. In 2010 South Africa hosted the first soccer world cup on the African continent, a great experiment of the work that was seen the nation building up both nationally as well as internationally.
