We must obliterate racism in our democratic society

FORTY years ago, Steve Biko was murdered by the apartheid security services.

Emotional scars still surface, even after the passage of all of this time.

The many years of official racial segregation continue to have a heavy impact today, and one can see the need for appropriate reparation for the horrors inflicted on the masses, spanning many years of torment and humiliation. Racism is incipient criminality. Punish it harshly.

The preaching of supremacy and practising of racism are repugnant and fundamentally against the values we hold dear as a civilised society.

We must finish the work of our beloved Nelson Mandela by obliterating every vestige of racism in our democratic society.

Racism is present in the acts and attitudes of many today.

It is present in the institutional residues of past choices. Farouk Araie