OPINION - I have to ask myself why racial issues continue in South Africa decades after the end of apartheid.
I grew up in South Africa, went to a big school in Johannesburg and am now working outside the country, but I still come back every year or two to see my family. I found, though, that the political discourse appears to be getting worse and not any better.
So much is still blamed on white South Africans, and I think that to be a little unfair. I have many black, white, coloured and Asian friends.
I am not saying that whites are blameless in all of this, but there needs to be some perspective.
Growing up in apartheid South Africa, often the English- and Afrikaans-speaking South Africans did not get along.
They were never a united people based on their skin colour, and so were all black people never a united people based on skin colour.
The Xhosa and Zulu were poles apart, as were the Tswana and Shangaan.
I came back in March and April of 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, particularly in Johannesburg, were very quiet.
This worried me. If more was done about the crime, more people would want to go out at night. Then more people would have jobs.
There also needs to be more done to get people into work.
And this must involve the informal economy.
People are just not going to get jobs in the shopping malls, and rather than looking towards Europe and the US, South Africa would be better off looking towards 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 debacle, it seems that 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, where everyone got ahead.
They stopped blaming politics and moved everyone in the country forward.
If it looked towards Asian economies instead of European and the US, I think South Africa would be better off.