Africa was just emerging from the eighties, largely considered in international policy circles as "Africa's lost decade".

What made South Africa's emergence as a free country all the more exemplary is that it was a country with a well-developed economic infrastructure, even if it was meant to serve a white oppressive minority.

In addition, South Africa's freedom immediately after the Cold War and the triumph of liberal democracy inevitably meant that South Africa would play the role of a middle power in Africa.

It would be what countries like France, Great Britain are in the political economy of the European Union.

South Africa would have to lead on important values and norms.

Importantly, South Africa had the moral and political high ground to lead and to be a voice because its own political transformation was rooted in the moral authority of Nelson Mandela.

In particular his unconditional embrace of those who locked him in a cell for many years was a massive lesson to humanity.

In a nutshell, South Africa's democracy was foundationally, at least at the time, rooted in a spirit of tolerance.

However, serious students and researchers of political transformations in history, especially after the fall of the Iron Curtain, would note that South Africa was not the first African country to experience such an explosive transformation, at least in terms of meaning and intentions.

South Africa's miracle at the time came right on the heels of another equally important historical experience, that of Namibia.

Ours is an equally important project which received an inordinate amount of praise and analysis in academic books, and it also served as a template for other transformative political processes around the world, of which South Africa is no exception.

What stood out as a cardinal element explaining our success and that of South Africa is not the triumph of liberal democracy per se, but a spirit of tolerance is what drove our process and optimism at the time.

As a value it is the basis of many successful societies, irrespective of their economic development.

Yet as we have noted, it has become a value that is now in short supply, both in South Africa and Namibia.

The bubble about South Africa's "rainbow people of God" has in some measure been undermined by xenophobic attacks in recent months and internecine fights in the ANC, with the potential to undermine the national democratic revolution.

And the question is posed as to whether this was a national democratic revolution after all.

In Namibia, our former Prime Minister, Hage Geingob, always spoke about the "Namibian way", which broadly defined, meant a spirit of political consensus and compromise.

After all, these are sub-values that were rooted in an emerging spirit of tolerance.

Sadly, we have now become erratic and seem to have given up on these values as individuals and as a collective, with dangerous consequences for the meaning of our democracy, if at all we still want to give any powerful meaning to this process.

The rebellious tone in which our politicians find themselves, in particular some in the ruling party, is worrying.

It has the potential to tear up and undermine our democratic gains, and worse, our peace.

Yet, given the foundations on which Swapo was founded, that of a tolerant and open society, it is they who should be unwavering defenders of our freedom and a tolerant society.

To think or to argue that freedom or democracy is good, for as long as we are ruling or winning elections, is to think in a manner that is reckless and selfish.

It borders on thinking in the way in which Robert Mugabe has been doing.

And when we think of Zimbabwe today, it should scare us to realise that we are acting amateurishly.

It is naïve, both in the short and long term, to think that it is acceptable for leaders to incite the masses and speak in a manner that it is disrespectful of our constitutional values, yet believe that we will consolidate our peace.

When politicians speak, including at party rallies, they must educate and defend important societal structuring values.

Alas, the cactus we now face as a nation is that very few are prepared to stick their heads out of the sand and defend society as the French philosopher Michel Foucault would want us to.

We have become exceedingly selfserving and existentially rebellious with distant regard for the future of the collective.

It is time that we think hard about ourselves, deliberate about the structuring values on which successful societies are built.

Once we have done that, we would note that tolerance as a structuring value should be on the pedestal.

And we must debate, and in the process educate ourselves, as to what it means to be a tolerant society.

* Alfredo Tjiurimo Hengari is a PhD fellow in political science at the University of Paris- Pantheon Sorbonne, France.

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