Reflecting Nelson Mandela's vision for sport in his country, South Africa's multi-racial rugby sevens team huddled today in the middle of the stadium named after the anti-apartheid leader, raised their hands to the skies and joined them together.
The South Africans then won their game.
Mandela would have surely enjoyed it, just as he famously delighted in the Springboks' famous rugby World Cup victory in 1995 or the country's historic hosting of the 2010 football World Cup.
In the stands at Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium, blacks and whites waved their country's colorful flag and loudly cheered scores by the dreadlocked Cecil Afrika and the team's blond captain, Kyle Brown.
"It's a real honor and privilege to be a South African today," Brown said, apologizing that he wasn't able to give, in his eyes, a more poetic tribute to former president
Mandela, who died Thursday at the age of 95.
Brown said he would have liked to give a better description of what Mandela meant to South Africa. In fact, it was more incisive than he thought.
South African sport is now proud, and it wasn't always. For decades it was instead splintered by racism like every aspect of South Africa's apartheid-era society. Black players were excluded and white ones vilified for their perceived connection to a racist regime. Fans at home turned on their own national teams until Mandela told them to unite.
So, while mourning the loss of the nation's beloved father figure, South Africa has decided its sporting events, so central to the country's new unity, will go on over the next days as a proud celebration of Mandela's inspiring legacy.
South Africans will play for Mandela; rugby players, footballers, cricketers and more.
From the international rugby sevens tournament in Port Elizabeth to a big domestic football cup final in the northern city of Nelspruit later Saturday and a cricket game between South Africa and visiting India in the east coast city of Durban tomorrow.
"We celebrate a life well lived," sports minister Fikile Mbalula said, announcing a plan for games for the next week. "It's through sport that we do not differentiate between white and black but are identified as one nation. This is through the legacy that Mandela achieved."
Mbalula said that the national anthem, a mix of five different languages, would be sung at every match or tournament until Mandela is buried in a state funeral near his rural South African home on December 15. That day, next Sunday, no sport will take place.
