Williams, who played as wingHe would have suffered a heart attack in Cape Town, where he lived and worked as a rugby coach for the University of the Western Cape.
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It was the only black player from the Springboks team that won the final to the All blacks New Zealanders 15-12, at Ellis Park. Before, in the quarterfinals duel against Samoa (42-14), he achieved the then historical record of his National Team, when converting four tries.
Since his debut in 1993, Williams played 27 games with the South Africa shirt and scored 14 tries. His short stature (1.74) did not prevent him from shining in the same position where his uncle, Avril Williams, had become a decade earlier in the second black to play in the National Team. The first had been Errol Tobias on May 30, 1981, against Ireland.
During the apartheid which began in South Africa in 1948 when the National Party won the elections and established those segregation policies, only white players had the right to represent the Springboks.
Nelson Mandela, who was 27 years imprisoned in Robben Island, was the man who managed to end that system after regaining freedom, which occurred on February 11, 1990.
Although we had to wait until 1994 to live the first democratic elections, with almost 20 million people exercising that right for the first time, the changes began to be seen and also occurred in rugby.
In 2014, Chester Williams offered a rugby course at the Paraisópolis slum, in the Morumbí neighborhood, for about fifty children and teenagers who are part of the Rugby Institute for All social inclusion program. (Photo: EFE / Sebastiao Moreira)
Williams used to praise the former president, who died in 2013. He did so, for example, before the Rio 2016 Games, when rugby was Olympic for the first time. "Mandela taught us that we need to be tolerant, respectful and accept each other for who we are and not for skin color", he said during a rugby course he gave for 50 children and teenagers in the Paraisópolis favela in 2014.
His name also played an important role in the movie Invictus, which shows how Mandela decided to support an exclusive sport of whites as a way to unite the country in the 1995 World Cup organized by South Africa. Williams, being the only black of the team, marked the integration of the elite team with the population.
"I hope we can follow his legacy. He was in prison and managed to be tolerant after two decades in jail. This is the legacy we need to continue in Africa," Williams said.
His death now shakes South Africa again, which less than two months ago suffered the death of James Small, the other wing of that historic squad of 1995.
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