I have to ask myself why the racial issues continue many decades after the end of apartheid?
I grew up in South Africa, went to school in Johannesburg and I am working outside the country, but I come back every year or two to see my family.
I found though that the political discourse appears to be getting worse. So much blame is put on white South Africans.
It’s unfair. I’m not saying whites are blameless, but there needs to be some perspective.
I have many black, white, coloured and Asian friends. Often English-speaking and Afrikaans-speaking people didn’t get along during apartheid. Just to call them by race was a misnomer.
They were never a united people simply based on their skin colour and neither were black people united people based on their skin colour. The Xhosas and Zulus were poles apart as were the Tswanas and Tsongas. This was a lie sold to South Africa to make people believe the apartheid government needed the British to bolster its cause.
I came back in March and April last year and found most black people to be friendly and polite.
Crime appeared to be out of control though. Going out at night appeared to be scary and the roads were quiet, especially in Johannesburg.
This worried me. If more was done about crime, then more people would want to go out at night and more people would have jobs.
More also needs to be done to get people working. This must involve the informal economy. People are not going to get jobs in shopping malls and rather than looking towards Europe and the US, South Africa would be better off learning from Asia - Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam for instance.
More has to be done if people are to get out of the cycle of poverty, crime and debt.
Given the Jacob Zuma and Nkandla debacle, it seems anyone can rob the Treasury and when people complain, they blame it on racism and colonisation.
I wonder when South Africa will get out of the blame game and move ahead in the same way Singapore did. People there stopped blaming politics and moved everyone in the country forward.
If South Africans did the same, everyone would be better off.