THE 1995 RUGBY-WORLD-CUP AND THE POLITICS OF NATION-BUILDING IN SOUTH-AFRICA

The 1995 Rugby World Cup was held in South Africa just one year after the country's first democratic elections. Throughout the tournament, t he importance of competition victory for the South African team - play ing under the banner of 'One Team, One Nation' and endorsed by Preside nt Mandela - was articulated by the team, the local media, politicians and by its supporters in terms of its centrality to the project of na tion-building. This discourse dominated all others. What made this art iculation of the event all the more remarkable was the historic connec tion of the game with Afrikaner popular culture and with the political interests of the previous apartheid regime. Drawing on Dyan and Katz' s (1992) model of the 'media event', the article examines the processe s behind this attempt to rearticulate the meaning of 'South African ru gby' away from narrow, race-specific interests towards those of the ne wly elected non-racial ANC-led government's nation-building project.