Speaking in  Cape Town, she said South Africans have shown how to bridge the divide between people who grew up learning to hate one another. “You showed  the rights of minorities can be protected even in places where the majority spent decades  living in oppression.”

 Yet in the North West province a group of men killed a Muslim and injured his friend after making insulting remarks about his beard.

 They reportedly said he  looked like Osama bin Laden, once the most hated man in the West.

Call it Islamophobia or just plain racist, religious intolerance, such barbaric behaviour is a terrible reminder of how thinly the “rainbow” veneer papers over the cracks in our divided society.

Compounding the folly, website commentators make derogatory generalisations about the ethnicity of the attackers.

Such hate begets  hate, just as violence begets violence. We all have to work much harder at getting along.