We all remember the image: Winnie Madikizela-Mandela arriving in Soweto after defying her banishment to arid Brandfort.
Fist in the air, defiant smile on her face and hundreds of supporters crowded around her four-roomed house, she was the picture of the self-confidence that the anti-apartheid struggle was about.
She was then an unblemished icon — the face of the revolution being fought in the streets of South Africa. She was the personification of her imprisoned husband and the voice of Oliver Tambo and the exiled leadership, whose words apartheid’s repressive laws would not let us hear.
Hers, then, was a struggle about morality, about the decent society that was being sought and about the high ideals that the liberation movements were preaching.
So when Madikizela-Mandela was convicted of fraud and theft last week, it was that decency and those high ideals that she was found guilty of betraying.
It was not a moment to be celebrated, even by those who detest Madikizela-Mandela. It was a sad moment.
It was also a moment that should cajole us into examining how one in whom the nation had invested so much faith turned against the ideals for which she fought.
By extension it should prompt within us a deep introspection about how so many who gave up so much in order that a good society be created have become the parasites.
History is replete with examples of revolutions that went wrong, liberation movements that turned against the people and heroic figures who became villains.
Recent events have enabled us to realise how things can go very wrong if heroes are not kept on their toes. What these events reveal is the need for introspection that will prevent us from handing to future generations a rotten republic in which morality is blurred.
The conviction of Tony Yengeni and Madikizela-Mandela prove to us that the post-liberation struggle is the more difficult one and one in which the foe is not easily identifiable.
And the destruction of Zimbabwe (once a model for the management post-liberation societies) by those who liberated the country shows that liberation-era ideals are assets to be treasured and protected even if they appear unfashionable.
The South African project is one in which an entire nation is seeking to rebuild itself, in which we are trying to redefine ourselves and refine our belief systems. At the centre of this national redefinition should be the key value of morality, the standard around which all debate about growth paths, empowerment, patriotism and national interest should pivot.
Morality was the ideal that was the antithesis of apartheid. But along the way we have got lost and seem to have adapted to the ideals-starved post-Cold War era.
We take short cuts and when caught employ the lazy defences of racial and political party solidarity. Lazy racial solidarity surely explains why white South Africa reacts with righteous indignation to any suggestion that Hansie Cronje died an evil man.
Yet these self-same defenders of the crooked cricketer will jump at every opportunity to call for the heads of Yengeni and Madikizela-Mandela.
Flip the race coin and you will find a stoic defence of struggle veterans who, like Cronje, received late night calls from the devil. These “comrades” suffered immensely at the hands of the apartheid security forces, the crude defence will go. Their crookedness becomes some sort of post-apartheid stress syndrome.
And so it is argued that it’s wrong for Allan Boesak, Yengeni and Madikizela-Mandela to suffer the consequences of their post-apartheid greed. Their defenders point to the fact that the FW de Klerks, Adriaan Vloks and Philip Powells are still walking free while struggle heroes are being tried for lesser crimes.
If ever there was a perverse sense of morality this is it. To use the Nats and the lieutenants of the tetchy chief from Ulundi as moral standards is to admit to being morally unambitious.
Surely a higher level of morality is required of those leaders who should now be instrumental in the building of the new republic?
The African National Congress, in particular, has a calling and responsibility way beyond its membership and support base. The majority of South Africans identify with the ANC not only as political party but also as an instrument with which they form their opinions and value systems.
This is the nature of the relationship between liberated people and the movements that liberate them. Zimbabwe is rotten today because it allowed its primary liberation movement to be infected with greed and self-aggrandisement.
As is the case with Angola, where one of the world’s most sophisticated liberation movements was transformed into a gang of thieving parasites who forgot about why the struggles against Portuguese colonialism and later against Western imperialism were fought in the first place.
South Africa has a chance to avoid that fall and build on the morality that created the likes of Albert Luthuli, Yusuf Dadoo and Moses Kotane. That morality is still present among many who were brutalised by the apartheid regime. We can still learn from the likes of Albertina Sisulu, Ellen Khuzwayo and Sister Bernard Ncube.
They too suffered immensely but refuse to sink to their former oppressors’ level of morality. It is from those like them that we should draw DNA as we define the character of our republic.