Sport was always important to Nelson Mandela. In the long struggle against apartheid, the system of racial discrimination which governed South Africa for most of his lifetime, he understood sport’s power and resonance, the essential meritocracy of the playing field, the ring or the track, arenas where hierarchy is set by talent, not social status.
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Mandela adopts a boxing pose circa 1950. Getty Images -
Mandela is greeted by the former South African football captain Lucas Radebe in 2005. Jon Hrusa / AFP Photo -
Mandela holds the Fifa World Cup in Zurich in 2004 after it was announced that South Africa would host the 2010 Fifa World Cup. Franck Fife / AFP Photo -
Mandela and his wife Graca Machel prior to the Nelson Mandela Challenge Plate international rugby match between South Africa and Australia in 2005. David Rogers / Getty Images -
South African President Nelson Mandela receives a cricket bat from then South African Cricket captain, Hansie Cronje, in 1997. Adil Bradlow / AFP Photo -
Mandela with Brazilian football legend Pele in 1995. Juda Ngwenya / Getty Images -
Mandela chats with England's football captain David Beckham in 2003. Juda Ngwenya / Getty Images -
Mandela demonstrates his football skills at an ANC rally in the western Transvaal province in January 1994. Patrick de Noirmont / Reuters -
Mandela with the 2007 Rugby World Cup-winning Springboks. Gianluigi Guercia / Reuters -
Laila Ali, Muhammed Ali's daughter with Nelson Mandela. Kim Ludbrook / EPA -
Mandela and boxer Philip Ndouin 2003. AFP
In pictures: Mandela used sport to unite South Africa
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