The return to South Africa of hostages Callie and Monique Strydom after being held captive for four months in the Philippines has been greeted across the divides of race, language and political allegiance.
Photographs and television footage of the white Afrikaner couple hugging Foreign Minister Ms Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, a black woman, in gratitude for her role in securing their freedom, symbolise the unifying role of their ordeal. A photograph of Mr Callie Strydom kissing the tarmac on their arrival from Libya - whose intervention was critical to their release from Jolo island in the Philippines - conveys a similar message of South Africa's emerging common patriotism.
So, too, does the formal welcome given to the Strydoms at the Presidential Guest House by President Thabo Mbeki, and the references to the ANC-led government as "our government" by their elderly parents.
But there is one jarring note. Fears have been articulated by opposition spokesman that South Africa's reliance on the intercession of Libyan leader Muammar Gadafy may have unhappy consequences in South Africa itself.
Gadafy is widely reported to have paid the Philippine-based Muslim separatists who abducted the Strydoms - and the nationals of several more countries - $1 million for each of the six hostages freed. The fear, as Democratic Alliance spokesman Mr Boy Geldenhuys has noted, is that the ransom payments may lead to further abductions and ransom demands in the future. The fear has a particular resonance in South Africa because of the activities in Cape Town of the Muslim-based People Against Gangsterism and Drugs, which is suspected of being under the control of Muslim fundamentalists.
It is main suspected of having carried out a series of bomb attacks in Cape Town over the past two years.
The return of the Strydoms has even overshadowed the national conference on racism which President Mbeki opened on Wednesday.
At the conference yesterday, ANC parliamentary frontbencher Mr Pallo Jordan reiterated two points made by President Mbeki: that whites were primarily responsible for racism in South Africa and therefore they have a major responsibility to help South Africa overcome its awful legacy. He told the delegates that whites were in denial about their role in voting into power a minority government that institutionalised racism during the apartheid era. They were suffering from "collective amnesia", he said.