Great Sporting Moments: South Africa 15 New Zealand 12, World Cup Final, Ellis Park, Johannesburg, 24 June, 1995

It was a moment that transcended sport: a final of unbelievable tension, decided with almost the last kick, and scenes of even greater drama off the field. Chris Hewett on the match that gave hope to a nation

(GETTY IMAGES)

It was not his height that set him apart, although at 6ft 5in he was plenty tall enough. The real problem was the weight – more than 19 stone of knotted muscle and sinew – allied to a sprinter's pace.

"I suppose you might stop him with an elephant gun," muttered Brian Moore, the pugnacious little England front-row forward, on seeing him close at hand for the first time. Will Carling was equally blunt. "He's a freak," said the pin-up boy of metropolitan rugby after experiencing sporting death by human steamroller on an unbelievable afternoon in Cape Town, "and the sooner he goes away, the better." Then there were the thoughts of Gavin Hastings, not a man given to exaggeration. "You have to say, he's one big bastard," remarked the captain of Scotland.

Jonah Lomu was the talk of South Africa as the third World Cup unfolded in the newly transformed rainbow nation in 1995. Not to put too fine a point on it, he was the talk of everywhere. Rescued from a violent, gang-ridden street life in south Auckland by his Tongan parents' determination to give him a Christian education, and by a set of extraordinary physical advantages that put a planet-sized blip on the radar of the New Zealand Rugby Football Union, he had dominated the tournament in a way that had seemed unimaginable in a sport so deeply rooted in the ethic of the collective. His supremacy over those few weeks in the republic was no less complete than that of Don Bradman or Pele. And because the currency of his supremacy was raw power, it bordered on the frightening.

"Remember, it's a team game: all 14 of you make sure you pass it straight to Jonah," read a fax sent to the All Blacks' dressing room before the final against the Springboks at Ellis Park, the brash, cacophonous stadium in downtown Johannesburg – a vast concrete symbol of Afrikaner rugby passion and despised until very recently by the black majority as a swaggering bastion of the "white man's sport".

The Boks would have been less than human had they not wondered whether the writer of that fax was entirely correct. If Jonah received the ball in a little space, as he surely would, what was there to be done? A week previously, he had single-handedly humiliated England, one of the world's strongest sides, by scoring four tries, two of which were merely sensational and two of which beggared belief.

Then there were the other All Blacks: Sean Fitzpatrick and Ian Jones, Josh Kronfeld and Zinzan Brooke, Andrew Mehrtens and Walter Little, Jeff Wilson and Glen Osborne – players who made up perhaps the single most exhilarating team in the post-war history of the union code. These people were playing a brand of "total" rugby that was routinely described by hard-bitten critics as ground-breaking. Nothing in team sport had ever been unstoppable, but the New Zealanders appeared to be the closest thing to it. All this and Lomu too? Please.

By comparison, the Springboks were in a very different place. Here was a team effective enough in their close-togetherness but, when set against their fellow finalists, transparently lacking in star quality. Before the tournament, only two of their number were considered to be in the very front rank of international players: the scrum-half Joost van der Westhuizen and the full-back Andre Joubert.

Many of their colleagues – Chester Williams and Joel Stransky, Os du Randt and Mark Andrews, Ruben Kruger and the captain Francois Pienaar – would ultimately be deified by the South African sporting public and earn the undying respect of rugby folk worldwide. But at this point, they were supporting acts. The top-of-the-bill performers were all dressed in black.

And besides, the external pressures on the Springboks – political, social, cultural – were so great as to be overpowering. They had been under huge strain throughout the tournament, not least because they were representing and honouring the new South Africa, in all its rainbow-nation diversity. The men at the top end of the Springbok operation – the manager, Morne du Plessis (a former national captain from the bad old days of apartheid-stained, Broederbond-tainted, rugby whose enlightened opinions, deeply held but seldom expressed, had sat uneasily with his status as white South Africa's sporting leader), and the South African governing body's chief executive, Edward Griffiths, a former journalist who had coined the phrase "one team, one country" – had barely put a foot wrong in emphasising the essential change in the spirit of the land. But for all their efforts, the odd fissure had opened up.

In a pool match against Canada, the Boks had participated a little too enthusiastically in a touchline brawl, and had James Dalton, their troublesome hooker, sent off. In the quarter-final victory over the Pacific islanders of Western Samoa there were muted allegations of racial abuse against at least one South African player. Then, a few days later, the rains descended on Durban ahead of the semi-final with France. They turned into a mini-monsoon, flooding the King's Park pitch and raising the possibility of an abandonment before kick-off. Thanks to Dalton's transgression, this would have sent the French through due to their superior disciplinary record and dumped the hosts out of the tournament.

That the game actually happened, albeit 90 minutes later than advertised, was due in no small part to a group of black women in overalls, mopping up as though their lives depended on it. Yet even this drew caustic comment. "Where were the white women with mops?" came the question. The Springbok hierarchy had moved mountains to show the best face of their new country to the world, but the devil was still in the detail.

Men such as Du Plessis and Griffiths knew that this devil lurked around every corner, and, as the day of the final approached, their thoughts turned to what may or may not happen when the massed ranks of Afrikaners descended on, and filled up, Ellis Park.

Three years earlier, South African rugby had been brought back into the international fold from an isolation driven by the sporting world's growing outrage at apartheid. They marked their return with a game against their greatest rivals, New Zealand, before a sell-out crowd in Johannesburg – a crowd who would not, it was assumed by the new political elite established in the aftermath of Nelson Mandela's release from prison, even dream of fanning the dying embers of the old thinking by waving their traditional "white" South African flags or singing so much as a single note of "Die Stem", the "national" anthem so hated by the black majority.

As it turned out, tens of thousands of white rugby followers draped in flags gave a lusty rendition of the anthem during a minute's silence for "all the victims of violence in our country", as the stadium announcer put it, referring to the recent bloodshed in the townships. It was a calculatedly provocative, determinedly pointed, gesture and it caused an ugly, heavily politicised row.

The African National Congress leadership was incensed – Mandela was given a full briefing on the incident – and the following week's game against Australia, the reigning world champions, in Cape Town was placed at risk. The Wallabies themselves said they would sooner fly home without playing than listen to an encore of "Die Stem". At that moment, South Africa's chances of hosting the 1995 World Cup were no better than 50-50.

The crisis passed, the Wallabies played – and how they played, tearing up an off-the-pace Springbok team with an exciting brand of rugby forged in the fires of regular international competition – and South Africa was duly confirmed as the host of the '95 tournament.

But there was still the unnerving possibility, perhaps even a likelihood, of another outbreak of white rugby nationalism when the eyes of the sporting world next turned towards Ellis Park for a big union occasion, and that occasion was the final. In the days and hours leading up to kick-off, Du Plessis and Griffiths were acutely nervous.

Enter Mandela, the father of the new rainbow nation and probably the most famous man on earth. While still in prison, he had convinced himself that one of the ways to the heart of the white South African – one means of finding common ground with the enemy that might prevent the country splitting asunder along racial lines – was through rugby.

Mandela was no one's idea of a union aficionado, but he had learnt enough to distinguish between a forward and a back, if not tell a loose-head prop from one of the tight-head variety. And when the Boks gathered for their pre-World Cup preparation, he gathered with them, visiting the players in their training camp in a nature reserve on the Cape Peninsula, planting a Springbok cap on his head (he was offered it by the centre Hennie le Roux) and striking up an easygoing relationship with Pienaar, the captain, whom he had beguiled during the early days of his presidency a year before, summoning the newly appointed captain for a gentle chat over a cup of tea.

His association with the squad developed over the course of the competition. He became their inspiration – a living symbol of the inner strength they craved for themselves. After beating Australia in their opening World Cup match, the players visited Robben Island, where Mandela had been incarcerated for so many years and where, in a moment that humbled them to their collective core, they realised the prisoners still held there were now proud to call themselves Springbok supporters. Du Plessis, the manager, would later tell the author John Carlin there was "a cause-and-effect connection between the Mandela factor and our performance on the field", adding: "It was cause and effect on a thousand fronts: in players overcoming the pain barrier, in a superior desire to win ... in all kinds of tiny details that together or separately mark the difference between winning and losing. It all came perfectly together, our willingness to be the nation's team and Mandela's desire to make the team the national team."

Before the final, Mandela's close circle hit on the idea of "the shirt", suggesting to him he should take to the field for the pre-match formalities wearing a Springbok jersey with Pienaar's number 6 on its back. Mandela enthusiastically gave his assent, and visited the Boks in their changing room dressed as an Afrikaner would dress.

The stadium was full: the best part of 70,000 spectators, an overwhelming majority of them white, most of them clad in Springbok green. In the bowels, the man who had founded and commanded the ANC's military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe, and been incarcerated for almost three decades as a consequence, was preparing to reach out to the white masses through one single, stunningly symbolic, act of self-identification. Here, on this day, one man's appearance, in all senses of the word, would matter more than anything in the world.

When Mandela walked on to the field for the formal introductions to the two teams, it took some seconds for the crowd to understand precisely what it was they were witnessing. For decades, a black man in this stadium – assuming any had found their way into it – would have spent his afternoon cheering passionately for the opposition. Now, a black president was wearing the shirt of a Springbok captain. Gesture politics? It was certainly a gesture, and it was certainly politics. But as the crowd slowly came together as one to chant "Nel-son, Nel-son", this act took on a significance way above, and far beyond, simple courtesy.

Tall and upright despite his age and prison history, Mandela made a point of talking to the massively intimidating Lomu as he moved along the All Black line, somehow making him appear more human and less super than at any point in the tournament hitherto. By the time the anthems were sung – or, in Pienaar's case, not sung, for the captain admitted afterwards that he had dared not utter a syllable of the new, multilingual, "Nkosi sikelel' i Afrika" for fear he would "fall apart, crumble with the emotion" – the place was throbbing with an expectation that, whenever Jonah received the ball, he would receive the attentions of half a dozen Springboks simultaneously. Which, once the All Blacks had performed their ceremonial "haka" and the huge Springbok "enforcer" Kobus Wiese had walked threateningly towards it as though to say "bring it on", is precisely what happened.

The New Zealanders sought to involve Lomu quickly: not for them the notion that their most potent weapon might usefully be deployed as a decoy, at least for a while. They spun the ball his way whenever the opportunity arose, only to see him gang-tackled by roaming parties of Springbok slash-and-burners: James Small, the hot-tempered right wing with a handy pair of fists, and Japie Mulder, the ferociously committed young outside centre, were the principal crampers of Lomu's style, aided and abetted by Van der Westhuizen, the darkly aggressive scrum-half, and Kruger, whose performance was a model of strong, silent, courageous industry amid the flying boots.

Ferocity was the currency of the contest. The Springboks were not the most gifted of teams – there was little in the way of elegance about their rugby – but they may just have been the most unified side ever to take the field on behalf of the South African nation.

As recently as 1992, when isolation came to an end, there had been signs of the old split between the Afrikaans-speaking Boers from the highveld and the English-speaking "liberals" from the coastal cities. There was no split now. There was a predominance of Afrikaners among the forwards – the overwhelming majority of the pack was drawn from Transvaal, Northern Transvaal and the Free State – but in Chester Williams they had a black wing and in Joel Stransky a Jewish outside-half. In stitching together the threads of his team so effectively, Pienaar ensured that, in a trial of strength, the Boks would not so much as flinch.

By sticking rigidly to a game plan that was tighter than a tourniquet – the Boks never once moved the ball beyond Stransky from scrum or line-out – they effectively said to the New Zealanders: "You can try to run round us, but we won't let you; you can try to run through us, but you will not pass."

The All Blacks attempted to put width on the ball, but to no avail. Later, they would clutch at a supposed eve-of-final outbreak of food poisoning to explain a mysterious drop in energy levels, but the truth was more mundane: they were fought to a standstill at every ruck and maul, at every tackle, at every breakdown. And the harder they tried to break the Boks, the harder the Boks hit them – physically, psychologically, emotionally.

Stransky and Mehrtens split four successful penalties between them before the Springbok kicker ended the first half with a drop goal. Mehrtens, so beautifully gifted yet so frail of body in a sporting conflict of this intensity, replied in kind to level it at 9-9. Of everyone on the field, it was the faithful Kruger who came closest to scoring a try, but Mehrtens was the man who would have won it for New Zealand in the closing minutes of normal time had he hit the spot with a drop-goal attempt from an excellent position. He missed. And by now, Lomu had become a bit-part player, an adjunct. "He got the ball eight times, and we took him out eight times," said Kitch Christie, the Springboks' coach, as he reflected on the game the following morning.

Another penalty apiece during extra time saw Mehrtens and Stransky take the argument to 12-all before Stransky, the very model of tranquillity compared with his increasingly frazzled opposite number, dropped what would turn out to be the winning goal with seven minutes left on the clock.

There had been no tries, no hint of a free-running spectacle; instead, the crowd had witnessed the definitive exercise in rugby claustrophobia, which was just the way the Boks had planned it. When Ed Morrison, the good-humoured referee from Bristol, blew for time, Pienaar gathered his men around him, dropped to his knees and whispered a prayer of thanks.

Then, for the second time, Mandela appeared on the field. Up went the mass cry of "Nel-son, Nel-son", even louder this time than two hours earlier, and as South Africa's first black president prepared to hand over the Webb Ellis Trophy to the blond Afrikaner from the Transvaal, he said: "Francois, thank you for what you have done for our country." To which Pienaar, no one's idea of an orator but blessed momentarily with the tongue of Cicero, replied: "No, Mr President. Thank you for what you have done."

Not all the right things were said in the immediate aftermath of the match, as the crowds headed home through streets that, for this one evening, were not remotely dangerous. At the banquet, Louis Luyt, the domineering president of the South African Rugby Football Union, delivered a triumphalist speech so spectacularly crass that the New Zealanders walked out, followed by a number of other national delegations. At least one All Black had to be restrained from thumping Luyt. "Tired and emotional are the words that come to mind," remarked the diplomatically sure-footed Du Plessis, sorrowfully.

Within a year, the All Blacks would take their revenge by winning a Test series in South Africa for the first time, although Lomu, unwell and out of form, would play only a transient part. (Little did he know it then, but he would go through his entire career without scoring a try against the Springboks).

However, it was the South Africans who, by reinventing their rugby in the image of their new society, had rediscovered the best of themselves. In 2007, they won the World Cup for a second time, beating England in a final that was similarly try-less, if wholly less dramatic. Mandela, his health fragile, did not travel to Paris for the match, but when the victors returned home, he was photographed sitting among them, wearing ... a rugby shirt in Springbok green.