Whites feared the black man, battled viciously to stop him from ruining their sunny way of life.A year ago, a few days before South Africa played England at rugby, Pienaar went to the Union Buildings in Pretoria, an anxious young man about to meet his president for the first time. Six years ago, when the brutish PW Botha was still in power, South Africa had the potential to become the bloodiest place o n earth Blacks hated “the Boer”; they despised rugby, his sport. With each passing day the ranks of the Afrikaner far right diminished as the truth dawned: that the ANC was not going to take away their language, their land, their religion.The relationship between Mandela and Pienaar has become the symbol of the extraordinary bond, deeper than politics, that has developed between black and white South Africans. Mandela’s inauguration as president in May last year marked the end of 350 years of tyranny.

That was a happy day for black South Africans, a day of mixed feelings for the white minority. Nelson was a great guy, but would the African National Congress, the “Communist terrorists” now in government, resist the temptation of bringing true the nightmare white South Africans had been taught by their masters to endure, that they would do unto us as we had done unto them? No. They were celebrating their first-year-of-democracy birthday party. After Saturday’s game Pienaar recounted the exchange with his president on the winner’s podium: “He told me, thanks for all we’ve done for South Africa. I reciprocated, telling him we could never have done as much as he’s done for South Africa.” Meanwhile the crowd at Ellis Park, 95 per cent of them white, bawled in chorus, “Nelson! Nelson! Nelson! Viva Nelson!” Out in Johannesburg’s affluent white suburbs the black domestics rushed out on to the streets and shouted, “We’ve done it! We’ve done it! We’ve done it!”What they’d done, all South Africans, was something much greater than the sum of the 15 parts who achieved the heroic feat on the rugby field.

But they did a David on the All-Black Goliath because they kept the faith and they knew Mandela was with them.Mandela, who wore the green Springbok cap to work all week, said before the match he had no doubt South Africa were going to win. He believed it with all the conviction of a man who spent 27 years in jail knowing, as he declared from the dock the day he was sentenced, that he would return. Pienaar said before the first World Cup game, the no less remarkable triumph against Australia, that his team were going to win it for one man, Mandela. Most rugby commentators would agree that, man for man, the South African team is no better than the English. They would probably agree too that, man for man, New Zealand are the world’s strongest side. Few serious pundits gave South Africa much of a chance before Saturday’s game. (Joel Stransky, the one Jew in the team, showed skill in abundance and by scoring all South Africa’s points he probably killed off once and for all the residual anti-Semitism that has long lingered in many Afrikaner – and some black – hearts.) But above all you need heart to win in top-class rugby, and because the South African team had the higher morale and the greater hunger, they did what England failed to do the previous week against New Zealand.