Now, more than ever, the racial divide simmering below the surface of our everyday life in South Africa has transcended into a virulent reality! The gloves are off. There is no more posturing as our striking students dare to bare the reality:"F...the whites. Kill the whites!" as slogans on t-shirts clearly validate! It is an anti-white, anti-colonial frustration that boils over into a cultural resentment spawning hatred with an aimless desire for conflict and destruction!

On the other hand the majority of whites, the "holier than thou" folk, also cannot reconcile themselves with racial integration: their animosity is even more poisonous because, steeped in the apartheid ideology they grew up in, they still vehemently resist change albeit clandestinely...in public merely paying lip service to a token inter-racialism. The resentment festers behind closed doors where blacks are still slated and vilified... the 'Sparrows' of this world! This, no matter how covertly, spills over subliminally into their day to day interactions adding fuel to the racial discord in this country.
It is these "apartheid" born families from both sides of the racial divide that nurtured the current crop of students so it is no wonder that the deep-seated racial animosity manifests itself amongst these youngsters!
The student unrest has, perversely, provided a barometer indicating the extent of racism in South Africa. What one sees is frightening!
Our leaderless Government is at a loss in dealing with the student strikes. It is a no win situation. The police hands are tied. If they deal conclusively with the unrest they are accused of brutality. The students are portrayed as poor innocent victims. Yet these students have turned the demonstrations into violent confrontations; burning and stoning and even girls that are raped! No matter that the free education for deserving students is a just cause, this does not justify jeopardising the constitutional rights of the majority of students to complete the current academic year and turning campuses into war zones!
When is all the mayhem going to end?
If we are not careful, the seething racial hatred will spill over into society in general and with the EFF's Mr Malema egging people on to "take/occupy" unoccupied land...... the country could well find itself in a Zimbabwean scenario. The economic woes of the country as it faces junk status exacerbate the spiraling cost of living adding to the misery of the poor. It will not need much more to lash out. They have nothing to lose!
So what is the answer? For starters the ANC needs to face up to the reality and provide the decisive leadership our country so desperately needs. Our President must snap out of his state of denial. His support on television for the "fees must fall" students prefaced his statement that there is no crisis in South Africa or words to that effect! What an astonishing statement to make showing how far removed from reality he is! Perhaps his desperate, personal problems render him incapable of dealing with the political realities of the day...'giggling' while Rome burns!
The current student crisis must be stopped at all costs...hopefully by urgent and peaceful negotiation between all the affected parties. Failing this, then decisive police intervention must be taken. The country cannot afford to be held to ransom by a mob of students...the cost in societal and economic terms will be horrendous!
It is going to take several generations before we can hope for a truly inter-racial society. In the meantime every right-minded citizen of this country needs to re-examine his or her own conscience bearing in mind Dr Martin Luther King's famous words: "We must learn to live together or perish together as fools."
And we all need to heed Nelson Mandela's dream for our beloved South Africa. He said:
"We enter into a covenant that we shall build a society in which all South Africans, black and white, will be able to walk tall, without any fears in their hearts, assured of their inalienable right to human dignity – a rainbow nation at peace with itself and the world -....Never, never and again shall it be that this beautiful land will experience the oppression of one by another and suffer the indignity of being the skunk of the world."