Johannesburg — JM COETZEE's novel, Disgrace, remains a hauntingly honest portrait of our rainbow nation's fragility. But we ignored its diagnosis, and shed no tears when its eccentric author packed up and left.

Yet the alleged killing by Johan Nel of four people in Skielik recently serves as a violent reminder that we have been living in false consciousness all along. In fact, we've been behaving like functional alcoholics since 1994. Why seek therapy when you are still able to negotiate with your colleagues, loved ones and friends without giving up the bottle? Similarly, as long as black and white kids can attend the same schools without killing each other, and their parents sit on the same parent teacher association, race relations must be great, right? This illusion is fed by an emerging black middle class, as well as a critical explosion of black heroes in entertainment, sport, and even business.

In fact, mere talk of race relations is often regarded as jarring. Opinion pages, and talk shows, are dominated by fretful pleas that we desist from "race talk".

Yet, the image of Nel being led out of court and an emotionally charged crowd ready to serve mob justice is the result of an insecure nation confusing denial for racial harmony.

Perhaps the most tragic element is Nel. He looks like an innocent, pathetic teenager, who should be worried about pimples and school exams, rather than embodying a fully responsible, hardened adult criminal.

There is something tragicomic about a near-child being the catalyst for renewed reflection about the state of a nation's race relations.

After all, the Mandela generation was meant to transcend race, surely? What went wrong? And what are the proverbial lessons to be learnt?

For one thing, we have to abandon our obsession with homogeneity.

We have convinced ourselves that sweeping differences under the carpet is necessary for racial harmony.

Instead, we rally around some essentialist notion of what it means to be South African - beer-drinking, braai-loving, sport-obsessed, happy-go-lucky folk.

This is a mistake.

Harmonious race relations do not depend on ignoring differences. Accepting, and celebrating, differences are, in fact, necessary for healthy race relations.

Nel inherited his family's, and his community's, fear of difference.

Instead of learning a vocabulary to make healthy sense of his awareness of phenotypical and social differences between race groups, his confusion is sustained by putting a lid on recognising, and exploring, difference.

There is a clear lesson here. In striving to build a national identity, we cannot suppress difference. We need to acknowledge, and explore, differences.

A close reading of works such as Disgrace, for example, provides a safe and creative pedagogical tool for exploring our denial about the state of our race relations.

Second, we must stop pretending that race is irrelevant. This is often bolstered by claims that class and cultural differences are now more salient.

The truth is that race, class and culture do not oppose each other. They are all salient aspects of identity.

Ignoring any of these concepts impoverish our relations with each other.

Middle-class blacks, for example, still face racial prejudice even in their new, middle-class circles.

Race and class intersect in a complex way, but certainly do not displace each other. The lesson here is that we must stop denying the continued relevance of race. This false belief that race does not matter is at the heart of our rainbow nation's false consciousness.

Third, we have an irrational fear of race discourse that must be abandoned.

White South Africans, in particular, fear that mere talk about "black" and "white" implies that we cannot relate to each other as individuals. This fear is understandable. But it is also hasty.

What is beautiful about human relations is the natural curiosity we have to explore the shades of differences between ourselves -- appearances, personalities, intelligence, ideologies, etc. The value pluralism on which our liberal democracy is based stems explicitly from an acceptance that differences need not be divisive.

The eruption of violence in Skielik speaks to the fact that when we let differences fester like a wound we would rather not attend to, we could lose part of our national body -- like the four innocent citizens of Skielik.

While we must engage each other as individuals and avoid race essentialism, the complex relationship between individual identities and group experiences is a fact of life. Once we admit this, we can get on with a guilt-free, frank conversation about race, and learn to accept and celebrate differences between groups.

It's time that we started chipping away at our false consciousness by facing up to the lies we have internalised about our beloved rainbow nation.

McKaiser is an independent political and social analyst.