People united in hope helping to defend popular front, new adventure's beginning (7,6)
'people united in hope' is the definition.
(Rainbow Nation is a name for South Africa)
'helping to defend popular front new adventure's beginning' is the wordplay.
'helping' becomes 'ration' (a ration is a serving or helping).
'to defend' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'popular' becomes 'in' ('in' can mean trendy).
'front' becomes 'bow' (the bow is the front of a ship).
'beginning' suggests taking the first letters.
The first letters of 'new adventures' is 'na'.
'in'+'bow'+'na'='inbowna'
'ration' going around 'inbowna' is 'RAINBOW NATION'.
'new adventure's beginning' is the definition.
Although both the answer and definition are singular nouns, I can't see how they can define each other.
'people united in hope helping to defend popular front' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite see how this works, but
'in' is present in the answer.
'front' could be 'bow' (the bow is the front of a ship) and 'bow' is found within the answer.
The remaining letters 'ra' is a valid word which might be clued in a way I don't see.
This explanation may well be incorrect...
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for rainbow that I've seen before include "Natural multicoloured arc" , "Iris was its goddess" , "colours in the heavens" , "'I can sing a - - ' (song)" , "Polychromatic arc" .)