IT HAS been 16 years since South Africa became a democracy and set out on the path to becoming a normal society.

How well would you say the media are doing in reflecting this change?

Let's attempt to answer that by reflecting on the coverage of one of the most fascinating news events of the week - the scramble for 5000 cheap Tri-Nations rugby tickets in Soweto on Monday.

The routine way the rugby tickets story was reported, one would be excused for thinking it was a pretty normal occurrence.

Now, everybody with a passing knowledge of history knows this is not the case.

Even though more whites now frequent and even live in Soweto and other black townships, they are still as alien in the areas as they were during apartheid, when the mere sight of them would scare the hell out of dogs, causing them to bark incessantly and howl in fear.

So, seeing so many white folks standing in long queues at ticket offices in the township - some even camping overnight desperate to lay their hands on cheap rugby tickets - is completely unusual. It is news in itself.

And, it's good news. The fact they chose to be there, in a place they were barred from during apartheid, is a welcome indicator of just how far we have come as a nation.

That such an event was reported on without mentioning the race of the invaders, leaving that to photographs, is a far cry from the days of apartheid. Then we would have been told, for example, that the two men and a woman who camped outside the Bara Mall from 4pm the previous day were white - as if it were not obvious from the photograph.

Some might argue that the normative approach adopted by the media might rob such stories of the nuances that often enrich them, but it is a necessary approach in our changed times.

Should there be limits to such political correctness? Khulu Phasiwe from Eskom's public affairs department says he was disturbed by a race question from a Sowetan reporter after the electricity company recently suspended its door-to-door campaign of handing out energy-saving bulbs.

This after criminals claiming to be part of the campaign had robbed a white family.

Said Phasiwe: "For me this sounded a bit strange because the bigger picture in the story is that some criminals had hijacked a good cause for their own selfish ends.

"The fact that a family was robbed of its household contents and that two toddlers witnessed the incident is traumatic enough. To ask whether the victims were black is curious, to say the least.

"Perhaps I am missing something here, but can you kindly tell us why the colour of the victims was important to Sowetan in this instance?"

Responding, Willie Bokala, Sowetan news editor, said the newspaper has, in principle, moved away from viewing race as an important determinant of its coverage of important stories. He pointed to the prominence given the Leigh Matthews murder story a few years ago as an example.

However, said Bokala, the newspaper cannot ignore the reality that its readership is 99 percent black. That, he said, sometimes determines how prominently it plays some stories.

If you find that confusing, don't worry, you are in South Africa - a complex society with no easy answers.

I don't know what you think but the newspaper's argument seems quite persuasive - a reflection that though we're making important strides towards normality, we're not there yet.