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It was 1995, and the underdog Springboks had beaten the All Blacks in the Rugby World Cup final.
President Nelson Mandela walked out on the field in a Springbok jersey and cap, and shook hands with his team's captain, Francois Pienaar.
That was, says Mandela biographer John Carlin, the moment South Africa crowned Mandela king.
"When this guy came out of prison five years earlier, for most of white South Africa, for most of the people in that stadium, he would have been Osama bin Laden - a real present danger or threat to their way of life.
"Five years later they're all chorusing his name. And I think that moment of crowning him king wiped out the last remaining vestiges there might have been.
"It was a fantastic day of racial unity in the most racially divided country in the world."
Carlin's latest book, Playing the Enemy, chronicles the build-up to the World Cup final, and the way political prisoner Nelson Mandela used rugby to build a rapport with his white jailers.
The story is the plot for an upcoming Clint Eastwood film starring Hollywood heavyweights Morgan Freeman as Mandela and Matt Damon as Pienaar.
Carlin has been blown away by the success of the book, and the film adaptation.
"Even as I say it to you now, I can't entirely believe it ... it is quite staggering that there is going to be this movie made, to be directed by, of all people, Clint Eastwood.
"Clint Eastwood is crazy about rugby. It's quite astonishing. He must be one of three Americans."
Carlin says that when he was looking for a publisher for Playing the Enemy, his "gung-ho American" agent suggested sending his proposal off to Hollywood.
Months later, by pure coincidence, Carlin met Morgan Freeman in a small Mississippi town and it emerged Freeman had been wanting to make a movie about Mandela for a long time.
"He hadn't found the right vehicle, he'd read my proposal and he thought this might make a terrific movie and the rest is history."
Carlin was a reporter for Britain's Independent newspaper in South Africa from 1989 to 1995 - what he calls "the critical years" in the country's political shake-up.
"I was very lucky ... I got the last year of apartheid, I got Mandela's release, I got the whole transition, I got the happy ending.
"I always had the idea in my head that I would like to write a book about that time and particularly about Mandela."
In early 90s South Africa, rugby was a game for Afrikaners and largely ignored by black South Africans who usually chose to support the opposing team, and were fans of the All Blacks because of their name.
Mandela knew rugby was part of the diet of the Afrikaner, and so he learned about the game and followed the Springboks so he could start a dialogue with his jailers which would lead to his eventual freedom and, later, his presidency.
But his goal was bigger than freedom - he wanted to unite black and white South Africans, and, armed with a "One Team, One Country" slogan, rallied the country behind the Springboks.
The Springboks won the final in overtime, 15-12 with no tries scored by either side, and Mandela's aim was realised.
Black and white South Africans celebrated together in the streets, and "for the first time, the parallel apartheid world had merged, the two halves had been made whole", wrote Carlin.
"That really was the crowning moment of Mandela's political life. So I thought, here we go, these are two fantastic things.
"Mandela on the one hand, the most remarkable man I've met in my life, and the most remarkable political event I've witnessed in my life, and let's put it together in a book."
Carlin says Mandela hasn't read the book and probably never will, but there's a chance he might see the movie.
"The fact is that he's just too old. I took the precaution of interviewing him some time ago, about five or six years ago - he was absolutely in strong voice, lucid of mind, full of laughs and joy but now he's a 90-year-old man who has good days and bad days and whose short-term memory is not very good.
"Everyone sees this as probably the culmination of Mandela's life, certainly his political life, and on his good days I'm sure he's very happy."
- NZPA
