South Africa's initial hesitancy about asserting itself in southern Africa in the post-apartheid era appears to be over, judging by its military intervention in the tiny kingdom of Lesotho.
The reasons for that hesitation lies in two inter-related considerations. The first is South Africa's history as the bully-boy of the region during the 1980s, when South African commandos, acting in defence of the beleaguered white minority government, carried out destructive raids in virtually every neighbouring country. The second is the desire by Nelson Mandela's post-1994 ANC-led government to distance itself from those actions and that image.
Thus South Africa's interventions in the affairs of its neighbours in the immediate aftermath of the ANC's victory in the 1994 general election were characterised by a maximum of discretion, usually with Mr Mandela playing the role of Africa's elder statesman and peacemaker.
His forays into Angola and Mozambique were models of disinterested benevolence to all sides as he sought to encourage warring parties, the MPLA and Unita in Angola and Frelimo and Renamo in Mozambique, to settle their differences through negotiation instead of war.
Associated with his role as an honest broker was a scrupulous attempt to avoid any show of partisanship towards the MPLA and Frelimo even to the point of publicly offering the hand of friendship to Mr Jonas Savimbi of Unita and Mr Alfonso Dhlakama of Renamo, who during the same period had been castigated by the ANC as the auxiliaries or surrogates of South Africa's minority government.
The same model was deployed in South Africa's bid to negotiate a peaceful settlement in the former Zaire last year. Mr Mandela and Deputy President Thabo Mbeki carefully refrained from attacking President Mobutu Sese Seko and sought, instead, to coax him into discussions with the leader of the rebels seeking his overthrow, Mr Laurent Kabila, now President of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
But even then South Africa's role was more conspicuous: a South African warship was made available, at great expense to taxpayers, as the venue for talks between Mr Mobutu and Mr Kabila. In the end, however, South Africa's intervention as a peacemaker was unsuccessful. The outcome was settled on the ground by force, with the fall of Kinshasa to Mr Kabila's rebel army and the flight and death not long after of Mr Mobutu.
Looked at in retrospect one wonders whether the unsuccessful 1997 attempt to broker a settlement in Zaire did not generate a degree of disillusionment with the softly-softly diplomatic approach.
But as late as last month, South Africa was pressing for a political solution to renewed troubles in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), as Zaire was renamed, where President Kabila's fledging government faced a serious challenge from a major proportion of the very alliance which brought him to power.
But Mr Mandela found himself at odds with President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, who championed a military solution in support of Mr Kabila's government. Mr Mugabe went further: he used his chairman of the security committee of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) to orchestrate military support for Mr Kabila from Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia.
To the surprise of most observers, President Mandela appeared to back down during the Non-Aligned Movement's conference in Durban at the beginning of September, admitting that it was perfectly admissible for one country to intervene in the affairs of another at the request of the government. Later during the same month at the end of its conference in Mauritius, SADC formally endorsed the intervention by Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia in the DRC.
That seemed to set the scene for intervention of South Africa in Lesotho, where supporters of the three main opposition parties were reducing the country to a state of ungovernability. Faced with mounting protests, including a mutiny by pro-opposition junior officers in the army, Prime Minister Pakalitha Mosisili lost control of the situation. Unable to halt the protest he appealed to South Africa to intervene militarily.
South Africa, assisted by Botswana, intervened under the aegis of SADC and after two days took control of Maseru.
Standing back, it is clear that South Africa's intervention has seriously eroded Lesotho's already precarious sovereignty. That sovereignty is already under siege by a combination of geographic, demographic and economic forces.
Lesotho, situated in an enclave surrounded by South Africa, is almost totally dependent on South Africa economically.
Outside its numerically small and squabbling political elite, the sense of nationhood is weak. A study by the Helen Suzman Foundation refers to a "crisis of nation sovereignty" in Lesotho, particularly among the poorer and less educated members of the community.
From the South African side of the border, another kind of pressure is threatening Lesotho's sovereignty: the belief that its incorporation is inevitable and even desirable. Significantly the Congress of South African Trade Unions, an ally of the ANC's with thousands of members drawn from Lesotho citizens working in the mines, has voted in favour of a resolution calling for unification between South Africa and Lesotho.
Lesotho's elite are their own worst enemies. Every time they cannot resolve their disputes - as was the case in 1994 and again in the past three months - South Africa intervenes with perilous consequences to Lesotho's sovereignty.