With reference to Mondli Makhanya's editorial 19/02. I really did feel like South Africa had become 'my country' for the first time in 1994. It feels less so now than ever before.

Funny enough, it is not the crime or the corruption, the misplaced execution of BEEE, the blatant and shameless graft, the disastrous state of education and healthcare, the sneaky attacks on the constitution, the attempted gagging of the media or the lack of service delivery that make it so (although all of these do undoubtedly contribute).

Rather, it is the base-emotional reactions they illicit which, in turn, exposes the underbelly of the South African experience - that of deep-seated racism. White is right and black is slack.

Mulder has used his parliamentary platform and self-serving interpretation of history to sell his transparent belief that we are a country of black and white doomed to perpetual friction and not a nation of South Africans striving for harmony.

And so the obtusity continues unabated. Perhaps it is just crucial for politicos on all sides to deliberately fuel racial hostility - without it, most wouldn't have a creative thing to say or do or anything to hide behind. Their politics would be dead and their real motives exposed.