As South Africa prepares to host the World Cup, there are signs that tournament could help to break down racial barriers

“In Britain, everything is seen through the prism of class,” a film director told me. “In South Africa, everything is seen through the prism of race.”

I have just spent a weekend finding that even sport is filtered through one prism or another. First, I was at the Loftus Versfeld stadium in Pretoria to see South Africa’s rugby union team beat the British and Irish Lions with the last kick of the second Test.

Rugby is traditionally the sport of the Afrikaners. The Springboks, as the national team are known, were muscular ambassadors of the apartheid government. This was something Nelson Mandela understood when, shortly after he was released and came to power, South Africa hosted the 1995 rugby World Cup.

Militant Afrikaners did not share the world’s opinion of Mandela as a saint. So he disarmed them with a simple magnanimous gesture, pulling on the green and gold jersey of the Springboks, embracing the symbol of his oppression. He wooed the Afrikaners in the language they understood.

This story, culminating in the country’s first black president presenting the World Cup to the Springboks’ white captain, Francois Pienaar, is told in John Carlin’s book, Playing the Enemy. It will get the Hollywood treatment later this year in Clint Eastwood’s film version, with Morgan Freeman as Mandela and Matt Damon as Pienaar.

Yet winning white hearts is not the same as uniting the nation. As I sat in a packed house at Loftus, it appeared that the revolution was on hold. The South African national anthem has four stanzas, each in a different language, but only when it came to the Afrikaans section did the crowd seem to find an extra lungful of enthusiasm.

All afternoon I looked out for a black face in the crowd. There must be somewhere, surely. After all, nine in 10 of the population is non-white. But I didn’t see a black supporter anywhere. Not one. Then I looked down at the row of stewards on the touchline. Every one of them black.

It’s easy to be smug after living in multicultural London and seeing the world in one city. The Lions’ fans from five nations bring a Welsh flag that says “Mold RUFC”, and a banner from Ireland that reads “Kielys of Donnybrook”. But when I look at them, I can’t see a single black face there either.

This is rugby, after all, the sport born in an English public school and long played by the privileged. The price of a Lions Test ticket was R1,140(£86), which the organisers have now admitted was too high. So is it really race, or is it class? What’s the difference in South Africa anyway?

Under apartheid, rugby was always the white sport. Football was always the black sport. So no surprise that the organiser of next year’s football World Cup, Danny Jordaan, was a member of Steve Biko’s student movement in the 1960s. He was also a professional footballer denied the chance to play internationally. “Of course I couldn’t represent my country,” he told me. “I was not regarded as a citizen.”

Jordaan, and South Africa, have been on trial over the past two weeks during the Confederations Cup, an L-plate vehicle for 2010. He has been getting defensive about the country’s reputation for violent crime, and his defenders in the South African press found an unlikely counsel in Jeremy Clarkson, the presenter of Top Gear. The Sowetan newspaper reprinted extracts from a Clarkson column that described Johannesburg as “the least frightening place on earth, yet everyone speaks of how many times they’ve been killed that day”. He went on: “I’ve sauntered through Soweto on a number of occasions, swinging a Nikon round my head, with no effect. You stand more chance of being mugged in Monte Carlo.”

It must be a positive sign that the biggest controversy of the tournament was the vuvuzela, a big plastic trumpet with a sound that has been likened to a swarm of angry bees or herd of flatulent elephants. They have been blown at South African football stadiums for years, but are now offending the ears of international commentators and players. Calls for the vuvuzela to be banned have been met by charges of European imperialism. The short riposte is TIA – “This Is Africa.”

The vuvuzela, the makarapa – an elaborate hat adapted from a miner’s helmet – and the national flag became expressions of pride in support of the national team, known as Bafana Bafana. White South Africans, even rugby diehards, have been watching the game in unprecedented numbers. As Germany discovered four years ago, football can lift a nation’s mood.

Legions of hornblowers turned Ellis Park in Johannesburg into a humming hive for the Confederations Cup final between Brazil and the United States. I wish I’d brought some earplugs. But I got used to the noise. I was more struck by what I could see.

In the crowd of 52,000 there were myriad complexions: black, white, Brazilian and Asian. An Afrikaner father and son laughed as a black man in the South African team shirt blew his vuvuzela into a mobile phone. An Indian boy had a miniature vuvuzela of his own. In a single camera shot, the American, Brazilian and South African flags could be seen waving. Meanwhile, a Brazilian banner warned the Americans: “No you can’t.”

It was proved right as Brazil came from behind to win 3-2 and receive the trophy from President Jacob Zuma, who was clearly enjoying his spot in the global limelight. As fireworks exploded in the night sky and confetti showered the Brazilians on their lap of honour, it was possible to believe that next year South Africa will put on the multicultural mardi gras it promises. And that football can exert the kind of soft power of which Mandela is master.