It goes without saying that EFF leader Julius Malema and his party is a classic political corrective. He has seized on the nation's present discontents and is riding them for all they are worth.

He has no answers, but he asks telling questions. He is a standing rebuke to the ANC whose casual promises are made only to be broken. Malema is patently an astute politician and who should by right be challenging Cyril Ramaphosa from inside the party.

However, he is many things to different people and a populist with gumption and now that Jacob Zuma is gone he has been ranting about the majority of Indians being racist against Africans but that is questionable.

In fact, South Africa has been a divided and a racist nation and Indians, like other races, also bear the brunt of it. However, there is some truth in his statement because in parts of India there is barbaric discrimination and prejudice practised by Indians against fellow Indians, the Harijans (the "untouchables").

Furthermore, the Indians generally prefer light-skinned people and that has been endorsed by many of the past Bollywood movies.

Recently the statue of Mahatma Gandhi has been removed from a campus of a university in Ghana after a number of academics petitioned that the revered Indian independence leader and thinker was a racist.

Therefore, any form of racism from whomsoever must be eradicated and has no place in the new South Africa.

Sol Asmal, Cape Town