"The great thing about South Africa," a recent visitor said to me, "is that you can live in Africa without having to really live in Africa." And some days I can understand what she meant.

Days when you coast along massive modern motorways in a spanking new car, competing with a Land Cruiser as the driver changes gear holding a cell phone close to his ear.

Days when you meet expat friends for lunch in a terrace bar serving cappuccinos and caprese salads. Weekends when you take off into the country and sit sipping a sundowner on the step of a sanitised hotel with all mod cons. Sunny afternoons when cleaning the swimming pool is top of your worry list . . .

But for me, there aren't many of these days really. Not when you get down to it.

In reality, there's a surreal quality to your existence as a foreigner here which is hard to explain. A hidden aspect to day-today life which is very demanding.

There's a constant and continuous battering of your soul in this new South Africa of change. And it all seems so very innocuous. Like the complicit nod from the woman at the railway station giving you your train tickets.

"It's always better to pay that little bit extra for a carriage by yourself. You just never know what kind of people you might get as company, if you know what I mean," she reassures smoothly, pulling you unwillingly into her web of unconscious prejudice which is hard to counter on a busy lunchtime as you sign your credit card.

Or as you find yourself paralysed with panic in the paint shop as the manager bellows at a black employee for producing the wrong blend, raising his eyes to yours utterly convinced of that subtle empathy which relies solely on race.

The white woman in the bread shop has a kindly face as she moves anxiously enthusiastic to serve you - before the two black woman who have long been standing in front of you. You sit in a packed restaurant but the only black face is your waiter for the evening.

Even buying a bed is no easy matter. The normally inane conversation accompanying such a purchase suddenly and without warning becomes bogged down in heavy connotation.

A light-hearted comment on the weather to the salesgirl advanced with solid force towards political rantings on the situation in the country today, covering affirmative action, crime and discrimination in quick succession.

"In fact I'm lucky that X gave me a part-time job," she laughs nervously. "Otherwise I don't know what we'd do. I mean we can't even go on holidays anymore - we used to go to Durban but" - with a final triumphant glance convinced victory is within reach - "it's pitch black there now you know," she whispers, "nobody goes."

And there it is again, that look, that tone of voice which wills you in, calls you to be what you seem to be on the outside at least - one of them.

Later that week I watched a documentary which revealed Mr X in the bed shop as the man who had allegedly sent the bomb which killed Joe Slovo's activist wife, Ruth First. I felt sick. And sicker still last week.

Two boys are playing on a farm. One falls and runs to tell his grandfather.

The grandfather takes his rifle and shoots the black child dead. The white farmer claims he was shooting pigeons and a bullet went astray.

On the news that evening, the dead boy's family had neither words of condemnation nor signs of the outrage I was feeling, but a humble, painful shame at their poverty which would prevent them burying their son properly.

I felt they hoped the farmer would dig deep and produce the £100 needed and they could be quits. Quits? Not one member of the white community turned up at the funeral.

Sometimes I wonder if it is indeed possible to act "normally" in this abnormal atmosphere. Fully conscious, we are stuck in the middle, hostage to circumstances which have decades upon decades of history, part of a process that you personally have not created but feel guilty of nonetheless.

Guilty by your non-words. Guilty by your passivity. Guilty of perpetuating this hidden world of complicity and empathy, of condescension and communion. The kind of complicity which allows a white killer of a black child out on 1,000 Rand bail.

Recently, Archbishop Desmond Tutu again called on the whites to apologise for the past, to accept their portion of the blame and reach out to their compatriots. The white community's reaction was not one of understanding and compassion but outrage.

But it seems that as long as I live in this country I must brand myself a member of that community by virtue of the colour of my skin, accept that responsibility, but deny that would-be complicity loud and clear. Many white South Africans are already doing so openly and effectively. I'm with them.