A Plea for Racial Harmony in SA

We will make this very simple today.

A gentleman by the name of Jonathan Jansen has written an opinion piece for the Johannesburg Times in which he calls for, hopes for racial harmony. I recommend it.

Jansen is hopeful but not blindly optimistic. Noting, as he does, the failure of leadership in South Africa.

It is interesting in that he concedes that South Africa has "unresolved racial troubles" and that the murder of white supremacist Eugene Terre Blanche is the sort of incident that "forces South Africa to stare (at the issue) in the face."

This seems to be a reasonable, even-handed look at the issues that are roiling the host nation of the 2010 World Cup.

But, again, perhaps reinforcing South African pre-occupation with its troubles ... the World Cup, only the biggest global event in the sports world, is not mentioned once here.

Maybe the answer is simple: Even the World Cup doesn't seem important when your country isn't all that far from a race-based cataclysm.