Out of Africa: Bryan Habana trains with the Springboks in Perth this week.

Bryan Habana likes to talk about what rugby has done for him.

He talks about the 1995 World Cup, when he was an 11-year-old boy in a bubble of privilege with an abstract understanding of the dividing force of apartheid in his country, but no experience of its implications.

He talks about the path he was put on, one afternoon at Newlands Stadium, when his father pulled him out of school and drove him down from Johannesburg to watch the Springboks beat the Wallabies in the opening round of that historic tournament.

Georgina Robinson – SMH

It was the first major sporting event held in South Africa after the end of apartheid a year earlier and the first World Cup in which the Springboks were allowed to compete.

“I didn’t really understand what apartheid was,” Habana says.

“I didn’t really understand that my mum and dad sometimes couldn’t sit on the same train because my mum had a darker skin colour than my dad, or that my dad was expelled from rugby games because of the colour of his skin.

“I sat in that ground, in that atmosphere, seeing white people embrace black and coloured people; seeing white grown Afrikaans men crying.

“Here was this boy that never experienced apartheid, but just saw united South Africa – people through sport being able to enjoy something.

“That was pretty special and it was the pinnacle of how grateful I was to my parents. We were never exposed to racism. They allowed us to be the new South Africans; to be part of a new generation.”

Habana reels off these stories on cue. They lose none of their power in the retelling, especially when a “united South Africa” is as compelling and complex a paradox as ever, 20 years after the fact.

On the eve of his 100th Test match in the Springboks jersey, it is time someone talked about what Habana has done for South Africa. The 11-year-old boy who watched Pieter Hendriks leave David Campese for dead that day at the foot of Table Mountain and dumped his football dreams to take up rugby has become one of the world’s most decorated players.

That task is left to Heyneke Meyer, the third Springboks coach entrusted with the management of Habana’s precocious talent amid all the other roles – political, spiritual, rugby-related – required in the most challenging Test team coaching job in the world.

“One thing I know about the team, especially after 1995, is it can unite the country,” Meyer says. “We really work hard to unite the country through sport, especially through rugby. Bryan has been one of the key points in that.”

Springboks coaches are not just footy heads. They are equal parts nation builders, custodians, powerbrokers and puppets.

In that context, Habana was a gift for Jake White, Springboks coach from 2004 to 2007.

White plucked the Johannesburg-raised boy from the relative obscurity of the national under-21s scene and introduced him to Test rugby in mid-2004. Habana had never played a game of Super Rugby, but by the end of the year he would make his debut off the bench against England at Twickenham and mock the rugby gods with a try from his first touch.

Less than three years later, he helped South Africa win the 2007 World Cup, equalling Jonah Lomu’s record of eight tries in a single tournament, and was crowned IRB player of the year. There has been the odd lean season since, but when he runs out for his 100th Test appearance in Perth on Saturday, Habana’s form and class will be beyond question.

Just as important as what he did, was the fact that it was Habana who did it.

As the lightning-fast winger’s star was rising, Meyer had lured him to the Bulls in Pretoria, the home of South African rugby on the country’s archly conservative Highveld, where rugby was still haunted by its image as a white man’s game.

Habana was no Cinderella story. He was a young man from a wealthy family who went to the best schools in Johannesburg. He was well-spoken, polite, and in the bash-barge-kick world of the Bulls at Loftus Versfeld, he could rip up a football field.

“The fact that he started playing great rugby and scoring tries, and got the record for the most tries [in 2007], suddenly there were a lot of youngsters looking up to him and wanting to play rugby as well,” Meyer says.

“He was part of the regeneration of the Bulls. We needed something special and when he came he scored the most number of tries in that year and we won a title with Bryan [in 2009, after Meyer moved on].

“He really turned that whole province around, especially with him playing there in Bulls country. He’s been a nation builder.”

Only four Springboks have played 100 Tests. Habana joins Victor Matfield, John Smit and Percy Montgomery, who famously had no idea who Habana was when he walked into the team room in 2004, in the most exclusive club in South African rugby.

He is only the second winger, after Campese, to reach the milestone. That he still possesses the pace required of an outside back at 31 and a smidgen is remarkable.

It may well be Habana’s off-field legacy, however, that is talked about in years to come. The boy who had no idea that the colour of his skin was controversial in a country characterised by controversy and who wanted to play football until he saw a white man in a green jersey give a provocative fist pump as he goose-stepped an Australian.

The boy who, unwittingly, became the personification of the new South Africa and the new Springboks.

“Wherever he’s gone, through all barriers, he is an ambassador,” Meyer says.

“There are lots of kids who want to play like him. He’s well-respected all over South Africa, in all walks of life. We need that in our country.”