Give Rainbow Nation a chance. Support Motlanthe call to hand over to youth.

While cleaning up old documents yesterday, out popped a leader written for a magazine I edited in 1985. The ever optimistic younger me (25 at the time) was excited about the progress being made in the country after the repealing of hateful laws like the mixed marriages act and influx control, petty apartheid that prescribed who people could love and where they may live. The editorial was written ahead of PW Botha’s disastrous Rubicon Speech which, had he stuck to the script, would have accelerated the positive trajectory. But on that fateful night in Durban, Botha reverted to his selfish desires, ripped up the prepared speech ushering in dramatic reform and plunged the country into half a decade of pain and needless friction between its people. Thirty years later, those with a sense of history will see obvious similarities. SA once again has an out of touch President feeding his selfish needs, causing financial chaos (Nenegate). This time, instead of PW Botha’s emotive rallying call of the “Swart Gevaar” the enemy is “White Capital”. Over the weekend, former President Kgalema Motlanthe argued it is time for the ANC’s old guard to step aside and younger people be given the responsibility of leading SA. The contribution below from 22 year old Calvin Masombuka reinforces Motlanthe’s argument. The global community believes SA’s Rainbow Nation has disappeared as does the natural phenomena after which it is named. Reading Masombuka’s contribution, I’m not so sure. Hope Springs.  – Alec Hogg

By Calvin Masombuka*

“We must come to the point where we realize the concept of race is a false one. There is only race, the human race.”

I type this with an extremely heavy heart.  I just got off Facebook; I saw a viral video of a white man (Afrikaans speaking) knocking down a pizza delivery man who happens to be black, for no evident reason.

The issue of racism is getting out of hand as we have seen in the past couple of months (on social media, universities and even at “prestigious” events).  It is such a significant problem that it is affecting not only South Africa but foreign countries as well, making it a global issue at the very least.

Which brings me back to my point, this is a volcano awaiting to erupt, unless something is done and I personally believe media platforms such as the SABC, M-Net, E-TV and the general media players have a huge role to play in doing their bit in an attempt to at least curb this plague that is affecting our beloved country which was once world-widely known as the ‘rainbow nation’ and it’s people beautifully known for their spirit of ‘Ubuntu’ which seems like an archaic period.

Read also: Donwald Pressly’s municipal crystal ball – snatching back the Rainbow Nation

As I mentioned earlier on, with the Facebook video – I went through the comments section to see what the general people had to say in their personal capabilities, what I found was – plainly put – that a lot of people are extremely angry with each other, as I scrolled down I saw a certain lady who majestically put her point across without infringing the rights of her opposite race, but even so, she wasn’t spared of the backlash that befell her, dished by us people of colour.

However I commend her for her mature response as she responded with aplomb, facts and non-defensiveness.

It does us no good to keep showing only the aftermaths of racist acts and then analyse them week-in and week-out without attempting pre-planning and doing more than we currently are in extinguishing this developing national crisis.

Read also: James Myburgh: SA intelligentsia descended into ‘racial madness’

One may argue that the country is currently facing bigger problems, touché; but we are facing these economic, political, social problems as a collective and all of us are affected by them, as such we need to tackle the one problem that is the underlying, indirect solution to us overcoming the issues as a collective.

Let us try and show, educate all those who are affected by racism by using the sharpened tools of media that are at our disposal and for once forget about the bottom-line of the corporate entities that I mentioned above and take a moment to think about the life-line of this country which we call home.

• Calvin Masombuka is 22 years old, an Entrepreneur & Banker, and a member of the Biznews community.