One of the central themes of this book is that context matters for political tolerance. By “context” we mean several things, including the circumstances surrounding the efforts of unpopular political minorities to exercise their civil liberties. But we also mean context in the sense of national context. We contend, for instance, that tolerance has a different meaning and differing consequences in stable democratic societies as compared to transitional regimes. A study of tolerance in a regime such as South Africa can teach us much about what it means to tolerate and not to tolerate in a society attempting a transition to the democratic style of governance.

Our purpose in this chapter is therefore to describe the South African context at the time of our survey. We do this in part to provide a setting for our study, under the assumption that the particulars of recent South African political history are not well known to all. But we have several more theoretical purposes in providing these details. In particular, we assert that:

• One of the distinguishing features of South African politics is the intensity and multidimensionality of political conflict. Many transitional regimes are rent by strong divisions, but South Africa is typically considered to be a “deeply divided” society. Nor is conflict confined to a simple racial cleavage – although race is certainly important – but instead it implicates ethnicity and ideology as well. Consequently, groups perceive each other as highly threatening, with the threat being immediate and real rather than abstract and hypothetical.

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