Chester Williams, the only nonwhite player on the South Africa rugby team that won the Rugby Union World Cup in 1995, a victory on home soil that marked a historic moment of reconciliation just a year after apartheid fell, died on Sept. 6 in Cape Town. He was 49.

South African Rugby, the sport’s governing body in that country, said the cause was a heart attack.

Williams, who was classified as colored in South Africa’s system of racial divisions, was an important presence in the 1995 tournament because his team, the Springboks, had historically been white, playing the sport most cherished by the Afrikaners, the dominant political group under apartheid.

More significantly, Nelson Mandela, who had taken office as South Africa’s first democratically elected president a year earlier, had embraced the Springboks — long a symbol of repression to most nonwhites — signaling that there was a place for white South Africans in the new order.

Mandela attended the final match wearing a Springbok jersey with the No. 6, the number worn by the team’s captain, Francois Pienaar.