Thanks for introducing me to this. I just wish I had time for reading at the moment, but I'm about to get going on Steemit and that's taking up all my time. Race is such a fraught issue. The overall attitude of the people you describe in your first paragraph - people like me - is that the white European settler has brought on whatever struggles he faces himself, by conquering a land that wasn't his, then excluding the dispossessed from the political and every other process. You chain a dog in a darkened shed and are then surprised that when he gets out he's mad and wants to bite everything that moves.

But of course life is not so simple, as you say and Coetzee evidently illustrates. Nothing - not even the history I've described - can excuse the things you speak of, the violent and sexual crimes etc., or the corrupt leadership that has seen the example of Mandela and chosen to ignore it for personal gain. When apartheid ended I guessed it would take 20 years for things to settle down - the end came too quickly in a way - but that based on the assumption that Mandela that would be the model. Now things seem to be going in the wrong direction, as elsewhere in the world where the colonialism of the past 200 years or whatever is coming home to roost. Lurie, and his dogs, are now the victims of the history just as surely as were the ancestors of those who make his and their life a misery. The fact is that man is a complex creature, capable of greatness but much more often of sheer badness - 'evil' or whatever word we want to use.

I completely agree with the implication of your opening, that the entrenched knee-jerk positions of both left and right prevent us seeing the situation you describe for what it is, which would be the first step to having honest discussions about it. For that reason I value your post, as I praise JM Coetzee's attempt to confront (however subtly) this uncomfortable reality head-on.