• Before hosting the 1995 Rugby World Cup, South Africa was filled with societal fears and anxieties about what the future held for the new democracy.
• Nelson Mandela was the visionary that saw what a powerful tool sport and the tournament would be for uniting the country.
• Decades on, South Africa still leans on its sporting achievements to help provide hope in times of uncertainty and destitution.

In the first year of South Africa's infant democracy, fear ruled the country.

There was hope abound, but fear drove emigration, domestic ethnic and tribal conflict and, of course, black versus white distrust.

The country was hosting a tournament, of which they had never been part before, of a sport that was the Berlin Wall equivalent in how it kept particular people apart.

It was not enough that democracy was achieved and a majority elected president was at the helm. Black people ached for a decent life; electricity, running water, sanitation, adequate housing, jobs and opportunities to thrive in fields of sport and the arts.

Convoluted economic policies and slow-moving government gobbledygook had yet to put a grub in people's mouths. It took a visionary and a leader like no other to see there was magic in the arrival in South Africa of the famous All Blacks, world champion Wallabies and fearsome Frenchmen to take on the plucky Springboks.

Like he had a crystal ball in his hand, Nelson Mandela saw the forest for the wood - that this sport called rugby could be used for societal good. Twenty-seven years is a long time, and Madiba had none to waste trying to rebuild the infinite wreckage apartheid had caused.

This is it, Madiba thought, this is the instrument for unity that I will use as a bridge between races and to show the world we are more than just our past.

On streets where some were previously forbidden from treading, or forced to carry a pass, South Africans started trading and tending, selling bright flags, caps, replica jerseys and bumper stickers. They fraternised in bars and taverns.

For the first time, you were free to be whoever you wanted to be. Dance on the street corner if you wanted to dance. Cheer if you wanted to cheer.

There was no telling whether the Springboks had it in their guts to take down behemoths New Zealand but with the emphatic giant-killing in the opening game against Australia at Newlands, the impossible became plausible.

Joy quickly dissolved fear into hope. And the sight of Chester Williams standing should-to-shoulder alongside and going to battle with James Small, Andre Joubert and others, gave many black children belief that they, too, could someday represent the country with their white countrymen and women as equals.

Even in the face of giants - both physical and metaphorical - such as Jonah Lomu, the Springboks simply could not lose.

They went into the tournament as a group of rugby players that you might happen upon if you followed the sport closely enough, but by the end final at Ellis Park they were at the fore of national consciousness. They were heroes.

In their hands, captain Francois Pienaar, Ruben Kruger, Mark Andrews, Joost van der Westhuizen and Co., they had the power to make real the dream Mandela had for the country - not only in the sporting, but broader societal sense.

And when Joel Stransky scored the most precious three points in the history of sport, and certainly this country, Mandela strode to the podium knowing exactly what the new South Africa was made of.

The 1995 Rugby World Cup win did for South Africa's social cohesion what no commission, policy or speeches could ever do in six weeks: it united the hand of black South Africans with that white South Africans. It told us, no matter what may happen, we are in this together.

Fortunately or unfortunately, sport then became the crutch the country would lean on in the 25 years that followed: through the 1996 Africa Cup of Nations, 2007 Rugby World Cup, 2010 FIFA World Cup and last year's historic feat in Japan.

When Siya Kolisi led the Springboks to their third World Cup (the most by any country since 1995), it was rugby the country used to salve the wounds caused by rampant economic equality, joblessness, crime and, worst of all, gender-based violence.

In a sense, it is the gift Madiba left us with, to remind us that, no matter how far down the tough road we have travelled as a country, we have got what it takes to turn the wheels around.