Happy Human Rights Day. Gosh, we've got a lot to be grateful for!
WAS it really two years ago that I wrote about the trouncing England received from South Africa in cricket? It won me a £10 bet in London.
Since then the number of black players in our national team has doubled! Who says transformation isn't taking place? (OK, so with Makhaya Ntini joining Gogga Adams, it's gone up from one to two. It's the principle that counts, right?)
Seriously, folks, let's talk about transformation. No, not that old-fashioned numbers game. Let's talk about attitude, mind-set and commitment towards building a nation. How well are we doing?
I'm a generally optimistic person. I believe, I really do, in the idea of the rainbow nation. But there were two incidents over the past week that have left me hugely depressed.
First, there was the U2 concert at Cape Town's Green Point stadium last Monday.
U2, you must understand, is the defining band of my generation. I can chart my adult life according to U2 hits over the years. Every chord of every song triggers a flashback of times good and not so good. They're old friends.
While living in the United States, we queued for tickets whenever U2 was playing but never got to see them live. So, getting seats for the Cape Town gig made me quite sentimental. This was the miraculous culmination of a 10-year quest - we finally had tickets, and they were playing in my country. Their opposition to apartheid throughout their career had paid off so sweetly.
And what a performance! Oh, forget the massive TV screen and the dazzling special effects. The music was happy, quirky, angry, sad, soft, loud as they coaxed every possible emotion out of voices and instruments. The 31000-strong audience - mainly white - sang along happily even when Bono belted out a dazzling Pride in the name of love dedicated to Nelson Mandela.
And the lights dimmed, a spotlight shone out as Bono, tune perfect, sang out one word, then held out the mike to the crowd for a response.
Shosholoza!
There was silence. The camera picked out the puzzled expression on the singer's face. Had he not got it right? He tried it again.
Shosholoza!
Again, silence. Bono, determined, did it one more time.
This time, the crowd swelled with the response of the first word of the chorus, "Shosholoza..." and trailed off into confusion. They didn't know the words.
I felt embarrassed. The world's biggest rock group has taken the trouble to learn a song from my country, and white South Africa has not.
It was more of the same the following night on the Waterfront. The official opening of Imagine: The Art of John Lennon at the BMW pavilion. The managing director of sponsor Bridgestone/Firestone cracked open a case of saki in a Japanese ceremony of goodwill. "Imagine all South Africa living life in peace," he quipped.
I looked at the crowd on the podium with him swigging that Japanese rice wine. I had seen the exhibition before, in a bedraggled but cozy art shop on Philadelphia's South Street - stomping ground of the likes of Tracy Chapman and Grover Washington Jr.
Flash forward five years to Cape Town, the city that gave the world Abdullah Ibrahim and Basil "Manenberg" Coetzee. It's a celebration of the life of John Lennon.
And not a darkie among them.
Forget the numbers. Look at attitude and mind-set. How many of you, of us, take the trouble to cross that cultural divide? Music and art symbolise the best that humankind has to offer. If we cannot bring ourselves to share at that level, what hope do we have?