For Black South Africans, the Springbok had long been a symbol of the apartheid state - a team for white fans, cheered against by the very people the system excluded. Nelson Mandela had spent 27 years in prison under that system. Now, barely a year into his presidency, he made a choice that stunned his own supporters: he embraced the Springboks rather than dismantling them. He learned the players' names. He wore the captain's number 6 jersey onto the pitch. It was a gamble that a single team, in a single game, might give a fractured country something to share. When he appeared in that green and gold, the overwhelmingly white crowd began to chant his name - 'Nelson, Nelson' - a sound that would have been unthinkable a few years earlier.

The rugby itself was tense, defensive, and very nearly tryless. New Zealand arrived as favorites, powered by the unstoppable wing Jonah Lomu, who had flattened England in the semifinal. The Springboks answered with ferocious tackling, shutting Lomu down again and again. No try was scored by either side all match. Instead it became a duel of kickers: New Zealand's Andrew Mehrtens against South Africa's Joel Stransky, trading penalties and drop goals. At full time the score stood level, 9-9, forcing the first extra time in the history of a World Cup final.

In the second period of extra time, with the scores tied at 12, the Springboks won a scrum within kicking range. The call had been a back-row move; Stransky and his teammates overruled it on the spot. Scrum-half Joost van der Westhuizen fed the ball back, Stransky steadied himself, and struck a drop goal that sailed between the posts. South Africa led 15-12. Minutes later the whistle blew, and a nation that had been told for decades it could never be one thing erupted as exactly that. The Springboks were world champions in their very first World Cup.

Then came the moment that outlived the score. Mandela, still in the number 6 jersey and a matching cap, walked out to present the Webb Ellis Cup to the Springbok captain, Francois Pienaar. The two men - one a former political prisoner, the other a white Afrikaner from the heart of rugby country - shook hands and grinned. Someone asked Pienaar what it felt like to have 62,000 fans behind his team. He famously replied that they had not 60,000 but 43 million - the whole country. The image of Mandela and Pienaar together was later ranked among the greatest sporting moments ever broadcast, and it inspired Clint Eastwood's 2009 film Invictus, with Morgan Freeman as Mandela and Matt Damon as Pienaar.

Ellis Park still stands in eastern Johannesburg, a working stadium that has hosted countless matches since. But for one afternoon it held something larger than sport. The victory did not erase apartheid's wounds, and South Africa's road since has been long and uneven. Yet the photograph endures because it captured a genuine possibility - that symbols can be reclaimed, that an old enemy's jersey can become a shared one. A nation that had every reason to remain divided chose, for ninety unforgettable minutes, to stand and cheer together.