It always amazes me how people will almost go out of their way to find reasons to find and define "the other" with whom they can indulge in conflict. (Races, religions, families, tribes... even football clubs for pete's sake). And they cherish and nurse those differences so assiduously that they can be carried forward over hundreds of years.

It seems to me that an inherent part of being human is a very strong desire to belong. But belonging automatically requires the opposite: exclusion. Therein lie the seeds of conflict. If I am right then we are doomed as a species to live in conflict. Perhaps the conflict even has a purpose, possibly providing a sort of natural selection of ideas and ideologies?

On a more upbeat note: very occasionally we overcome the conflict-inducing stereotypes we have been weaned on. South Africa is far from being immune to conflict induced by diversity, but we have made almost miraculous progress from where we were a decade ago.