I was driving home the other day when an idea came to me. What if we had a radio show where South Africans could share, anonymously, what they really say about people who are racially different from them?
Not a reconciliation circus. Not a debate. Just an honest archive of the language we use in our kitchens, our taxis, our WhatsApp groups and most tellingly, at our dinner tables.
The truth is, we are not nearly as integrated as our Constitution pretends we are. We simply share space more politely than we used to.
Let me start with the words I grew up with.
In Soshanguve, where I was raised, Makula was part of the everyday lexicon. It was how many black people referred to Indian South Africans. Often without malice. Often affectionately, even.
But it was never a word I allowed in my home. Not because I am holier than my community but because one of my closest friends is of Indian descent and I have seen what happens when casual language hardens into stereotype.
I have watched her navigate the assumption that she must be good with money, spicy food or family politics as if an entire population of human beings could be reduced to a dinner-table punchline.
But if I am honest, my community is no less guilty.
Growing up, wedding songs praised the bride by saying she was so beautiful; she almost looked like a coloured woman.
Think about that. An entire population of mixed-race South Africans, people the apartheid government labelled "coloured" purely to make white supremacist administration easier, were reduced to a beauty standard. And not even a full one. Just almost.
The same community that gave us brilliant artists, writers and activists is fighting the stereotype that it is defined by alcohol, violence and drugs.
I have never tried to stop the conversations beyond my own family and friends, mainly for safety reasons.
But I carry the guilt of the silence.
And then there is colourism. The prejudice dark-skinned black people endure across every community in this country. The lighter you are, the closer you are to the door the architects built.
We do not talk about this enough because it requires us to admit that black people, too, have internalised the logic of our oppression.
Steve Biko warned us about this. About self-hate. About the labels we use to wound each other.
As an openly gay man, I made it my mission to ensure people in my orbit knew what Biko meant when he spoke about the psychological violence of apartheid.
But knowing is not the same as unlearning. I hear the words in my head. I see the hierarchy.
White South Africans, of course, occupy a different place in this architecture.
Where I grew up, Lekgowa did not simply mean a white person. It meant someone with resources. A boss. A saviour. The sentence Matuba ke lekgowa la ka translates to "Matuba is my white person" — because I knew the answer. I knew that for many white South Africans, their only meaningful interaction with black people is with the people who work for them.
In 2026, many have never set foot in a township. The same townships the apartheid government designed to keep us away from opportunity. They see us at a colleague's funeral. They see us when they campaign for votes, kissing black babies, performing charity for applause.
But they do not see us as neighbours. They do not see us as equals.
If you are reading this and waiting for the paragraph that says "not all white people are like that". you can stop reading now. I am not going to write it.
And if you are looking for a reverse-racism opinion piece, you will have to write it yourself. It is not my experience. I do not owe you balance. I owe you honesty.
Here is some honesty.
I recently watched a white woman on a train move to the next carriage because the only vacant seat would have made her the only white person among four black passengers.
I wanted to make excuses for her. I told myself that women are vulnerable in our society.
But then I looked around. I was the only person who looked like a man. Everyone else was gendered as a woman. She fled.
The four of us looked at one another and we laughed. Then we talked. I was sitting with people who hold PhDs, who run divisions at multinational conglomerates, who teach at this country's top universities.
The irony was not lost on us. The spaces that were built without black people in mind are now occupied by black people.
And yet the architecture remains. The black gatekeepers, security guards, receptionists, committee members, often enforce the old rules more ruthlessly than the architects ever did.
But here is what haunts me most. How do people my age manage to live in South Africa in 2026 and have dinner tables that are exclusively white, exclusively black, exclusively coloured or exclusively Indian?
How do we share a country but not a language?
How do we work in the same buildings but never improve those spaces in ways that hold room for everyone, not just the historically disadvantaged but also for those who were taught hate and intolerance and never given the tools to unlearn it?
I know we are not a monolith. I know black people torment one another based on which nation, not tribe, because "tribe" is a colonial word designed to diminish our sovereignty.
I know the violence we do to one another is real. But that is a conversation for another day.
This piece is about what we say when we think no one is listening. It is about the fact that we are three decades into democracy, strangers to one another.
And strangers are dangerous. They are easy to caricature. Easy to fear. Easy to flee from on a train.
I do not have a tidy conclusion. I do not have a ten-point plan for racial healing. All I have is the conviction that we cannot fix what we will not name.
We cannot integrate what we refuse to share. And we cannot build a country worthy of the portrait on my childhood wall.
Nelson Mandela, FW de Klerk and Thabo Mbeki, smiling at a promise, until we are brave enough to sit at the same table and say, out loud, what we have been whispering in separate rooms.
Matuba Mahlatjie is a journalist and strategic communications specialist.