The Road Less Travelled - the American poet Robert Frost's iconic metaphor - has been much on my mind these past days; this, and the idea of fashion -- political fashion.

Like society, politics is a great follower of fashion . Difficult as it is to believe, Fascism was as fashionable in the 1930s as African liberation was three decades later -- and as fashionable as liberal democracy is today. It is certainly true that we often don't immediately see this but, as just shown, a backward glance always helps.

When the Cold War ended -- 20 years ago this month -- three multi- ethnic, multiracial and federally inclined states faced an uncertain future. They were the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and SA. History records that the first two broke apart: we, of course, didn't. As South Africans know, the years since have not been easy years, but my impression after a week in the Balkans is that the road we travelled "has made all the difference" -- to complete Frost's famous line s.

Sitting in the conference room of the Montenegrin Academic of Science, the deep wounds of Yugoslavia's break- up continuously returned to the conversation. Behind the pleasantries exchanged between the citizens of Serbia, Macedonia and Kosovo, it was difficult not to detect a certain tension between these cousins who were once, of course, citizens of Yugoslavia.

Montenegro has only 700000-odd citizens. That's less than the population of East London. But, today, Montenegro is a fully independent country in one of the most turbulent corners of the world.

As speakers talked about the importance of "Values in the 21st Century", I wondered which values could have been better served in SA if the country had broken apart. Would the Eastern Cape have been a better place if it were separated from the rest of SA? Would corruption have been controlled? Would schools have been better?

Today, it is easy to forget how close this country was to both war and break-up 20 years ago. In the build-up to the 1994 election, Mangosuthu Buthelezi -- then, as now, leader of the Inkatha Freedom Party -- held out for a better deal. His brinkmanship followed months of gruesome conflict in KwaZulu-Natal, which periodically spilled into the Witwatersrand. Into this -- and often initiating it -- was the violence of a third force which, most now believe, was encouraged by remnants and rogue elements of the dying apartheid state.

Next year is the centenary of the founding of SA by an Act of Union. It drew four political entities together under a constitution which, as history also shows, excluded the majority of the country's citizens.

The greater part of the SA's history has been the struggle to draw the majority into the mainstream of South African life. It was not an easy journey but its ending has delivered one of the great political stories in history -- a relatively peaceful transition delivered a state undivided. For all the trauma and pain, ours is a story marked by compromise, constitutionalism and ... yes, by compassion.

In the exquisite beauty of Balkans, I found few of these qualities, even in Podgorica, the shining capital of Montenegro, the one corner of Yugoslavia that was almost untouched by the violence that tore the country apart.

At a coffee shop in the ancient Adriatic port city of Kotor, three youngish men sat at the next table. One's face was scarred beyond description; another had lost the fingers of his left hand. Might this trio be an image of the road less travelled? An image for states in times of great change -- times such as these 20 years past?

If they were, then SA was like the third man in the party -- completely intact, with no visible signs of injury.

Vale is Nelson Mandela Professor of Politics at Rhodes University and visiting professor in the humanities at the University of Johannesburg.