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Johannesburg - Proudly wearing his green and yellow Bafana Bafana team jersey, Grant Jackson urges on the pride of SA as they go through their final paces ahead of the World Cup kick-off.

"We all support one team and no matter who you are," said the 25-year-old student, one of the few white faces at an open training session at Johannesburg's Wits University.

"I think the World Cup definitely brings all people together, this great idea of unification."

Such words will be music to the ears of those hoping the world's biggest sporting event will bridge South Africa's racial divide, 16 years after apartheid. And yet hopes that sport will unite the nation have been dashed in the past.

When Nelson Mandela handed the rugby World Cup to Springbok skipper Francois Pienaar in 1995, many hoped it would mark a decisive break with the past.

Warnings

By the time the Boks regained the trophy 12 years later still without any black players in their line-up, the victory was accompanied by warnings from politicians that the status quo was no longer acceptable.

"Certainly for brief moments a nation gets together behind one team and that's fantastic," Matthew Booth, the only white player in the Bafana Bafana squad, told reporters on Tuesday.

"But at the end of the day certain people go back to the townships and other people go back to the suburbs."

President Jacob Zuma said the national euphoria on the eve of the tournament had not been seen since the release of Nelson Mandela in 1990 after 27 years in captivity, adding it augured well for nation-building.

But many South Africans are unconvinced a real sea change is taking place.

"Will it have a permanent impact? Only time will tell," said Aubrey Matshiqi of Johannesburg's Centre for Policy Studies.

Referring to 1995, Matshiqi said the failure to transform the Springboks' make-up meant the feel-good factor was only fleeting.

Violent protests

"Euphoria seldom melts away on its own," he said.

Adrian Ephraim, a columnist for The Star newspaper worried that "we are just caught up in the hype".

"I can't tell if this is a hugely effective marketing campaign or a spontaneous expression of pride," he said.

The evidence of a deeply entrenched racial divide abounds, particularly in the biggest city of Johannesburg.

While Clint Eastwood's feel-good movie on the 1995 rugby triumph Invictus was a box-office hit, the Oscar-winning Tsotsi about hard scrabble life in a Johannesburg township was a truer slice of life post-apartheid.

At the other end of the country in Cape Town, the build-up to the tournament has come against a backdrop of violent protests in the massive Khayelitsha township over communal toilets made of wood and corrugated iron.

The country's Human Rights Commission said last week that the structures were unacceptable as residents should be entitled to bullet-proof facilities in an area notorious for gun violence.

Privilege

In contrast, the residents of white neighbourhoods sleep behind electric fences with a panic button at their side for fear of a break-in by robbers. And yet the Cape's townships and white-owned wineries abound alike with South African flags.

One of the most remarkable episodes in recent months saw thousands of rugby fans head to the Soweto township to watch Pretoria's Blue Bulls in a Super 14s semi-final as their own ground was being buffed up for the football.

"The biggest challenge we face is lack of knowledge - black and white do not know each other," said Matshiqi.

"The World Cup and the coming of the Blue Bulls (to Soweto) gives us an opportunity to know one another, understand one another."

Joining his fellow fan Jackson at the Bafana training session, Tladi Buthelezi, a black resident of Vosloorus township, was in no doubt about the long-term benefits.

"The World Cup is already uniting the nation and it's going to stay. Just forget the negative ideas, this is a privilege to be here," he said.