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What I think or feel or write or say in the paper, social media or on the phone is not a threat to society. It’s freedom of thought. What is a threat is historical, institutionalised racism and the effect it has had on and the damage it’s done to some people’s selfesteem. Emancipating people from mental slavery after centuries of abuse is not done by enslaving others’ petty thoughts and attitudes to the cage of illegality. You can’t change a person with laws that make it illegal for him to think or feel like he does.

The present attack on petty bigotry is a smokescreen hiding and diverting attention from the real issues, like the disgusting disparities in remuneration between the board room and factory floor. Then linking petty racism with institutionalised bigotry by giving inequity the colour white – an unjust generalisation to the hilt. mcg.

Huge Technicolour portraits of President Zuma and Vice President Ramaphosa smile ‘heh, heh’ with glee as they overlook hundreds of poor, dismal, depressed, hopeless people without jobs, standing/ sitting in endless queues, at the UIF Registration and Claims Department of Labour, in Pinetown. Excess of 35 degrees in the 100m2 hall with over 200 people crammed like sardines: no fans, no air conditioner working, most windows closed, water cooler bottle empty and nobody to guide the unfortunate unemployed, treated like sub-humans! Ese.