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A packet of Ghostpops is sacredly opened and passed around. It's not long before I find myself in the midst of another "remember when" conversation- a group of young adults sitting draped around a room talking about their childhood memories.

We talk about the days when our lives revolved around the next episode of Thunder Cats or Care Bears; we chat about our clever methods of hiding vegetables under forks or gem squash skins; we laugh at how we used to tune in to Radio 2000 to listen to Môre is Nog 'n Dag and Alf; we cringe remembering how we used to smear thick wads of Zinc on our faces, luminous yellow and eighties pink-how that stuff used to stick to everything; to the towels, our clothes, duvets, walls, even to car upholstery…

Life was so protected then, it was so innocent. The conversation hits a lull and I look around at the faces that surround me; faces expressing nostalgia, faces with lips curled up in childlike grins, eyes shining; faces remembering the good parts of our childhood. I take in the peaceful contentedness radiating off of the memories of the people in the room.

I wipe my red, grubby Ghostpop hands on the couch and start to work at the clumps of maize stuck to my back molars, and I too, feel my lips curl up as I remember an incident from my youth. An incident involving a roughly tarred hill, the smallest size BMX- pink in colour, fairy wheels and ribbons distorting my view as they violently flicked my tender tear stained cheeks. And I remember the shrieks of laughter and support as I hurtled downwards… leaving tread and bits of my heel behind me.

I have found myself in this situation more and more often the last couple of years; sitting reminiscing about the 'old times', if one would dare call them that. After all my generation is an average age of 23, thus my opinion could quite possibly annoy an eighty year old somewhere looking for attention by retelling another ' back in the day' story… Harsh, yes definitely, I take full responsibility for that crude insensitive statement dissing the elderly but seriously, enough of our history, enough of the bloody Apartheid, enough of throwing blame mindlessly around the country, dammit, enough. I am sick of it and with good reason too? I am sick of being put down and kicked for other people's faults. I want people to listen to my generation, the only generation thankful to Simba for bringing back ghostpops, and what we have to say, and hear our voice amongst the whirr and mumbles of politics today.

My generation, the young adult generation, have some how slotted into a phase that does not seem to exist to many, at least not until a new school system needs to be tested, a group needs to be blamed or a person's job needs to be given away.

To elaborate on the fact that we don't seem to have a place in society, let me tell you about how we conveniently managed to miss the entire 'empower the youth' get-up, as we were just that little bit taller than Ronald Macdonald guarding the entry of the play land, that tiny bit too old. Then in high school, all traditional systems were dropped, and our final year, the deciding year of our careers, was spent test piloting the new and changed system of schooling. I am by no means saying the system is a failure, but I am trying to highlight the fact that we were the guinea pigs; we were the little white lab rats.

Miraculously then, we survive the schooling joke, and head off down the path of career-hood. Again though, our timing was horrendous, and we managed to enter the corporate world round about the same time Affirmative Action did. Okay, again let me back myself in saying I have nothing against equal empowerment, female and male equality etc, but no one told us we would have to be the suckers sacrificing our futures for it. No one mentioned to us that after four years at university studying a profession of our dreams, our future job would be snatched up by another person, regardless of qualification simply because of their race and gender. I realise that the mending has to start somewhere, but I am struggling to figure out why it's with us. I am struggling to understand why people are picked according to their race or gender because of affirmative action, especially when the pool of talented people to pick from is so deep.

This lack of realisation comes from the fact that my generation, averagely aged at 23, were not involved in the apartheid. We were alive, yes, but we were making mud pies and eating our dog's Epol pellets. We were lifting electric beaters out of ancient Tupperware's filled of cookie batters; we were lavishing in shipmate bubblebaths and picking our noses. We were building tree houses and playing 'stuck in the mud' around the time that all of the violence and mayhem was coming to a ripe head in South Africa. We were simply not involved in it. I remember seeing pictures of FW de Klerk, and I knew he was our president, but I also remember comparing him to the infamous uncle from Joshua Door. It sounds immature and childish, but that's exactly what we were. We were children.

Ask yourselves, what did politics mean to you before the age of thirteen? To me, and I am sure I can speak for a large amount of my generation out there, it meant very little. I was in primary school when Nelson Mandela was released, and I remember how mothers frantically brought long life milk and extra cheese so we could barricade ourselves in over the 1994 elections. I also remember how smoothly they ran, and on the whole, how easily our nation accepted it, 'on the whole' being the operative words in this statement, as in general, South Africans have accepted the shift in politics and the direction that we were heading and are now starting to embrace it.

Another factor worth bringing up is that this generation I so keenly speak about, has never really been exposed to hardcore racism like our parents or their parents were. When I was in primary school the new Model C concept was entered into the system, and for the first time ever and much to the shock and dismay of many a worried parent, children of different races, cultures and backgrounds were mixed together and shoved into the same class, onto the same school bus and into the same swimming pool. We were too young to hate it; hate is seldom a character trait of a ten year old. When the expected 'new kid' novelty wore off, the mingling, mixing and friendships started up. Before long, it was not even a factor, not even something one had to think about, it was simply our way of life. And it was a good way of life, we learnt and grew from it, and have become the open minded and compassionate people we are today.

Yet, here we stand, continuously trying to escape some kind of blame, some accusing finger, for something we never did. For something we never partook in. Here we stand and get reprimanded on how to behave properly, and told what to accept and what not to, in order to put a stop to racism. Here we stand and get called guinea pigs, but still get classed differently because of colour.

But know this: it's not us, its you. You are the ones creating this mess called racism and even more now with the methods you are using to try and change it. You are the ones building houses for the poor, but failing to educate them thus prohibiting them from appreciating, learning or growing from it. You are the ones singling out a black person from a white person when you employ using affirmative action, and you are the people that are stopping our country from peacefully and smoothly becoming a colourful and harmonious nation.

You think that by creating token places on a sports team for a person of a different colour, you are going to fix our country because it is the politically correct thing to do, but you fail to see that by placing an untalented and ill equipped player on a field you are again creating a blinding divide within a team. A team supposedly representing our nation? So if this is what's happening on such a minute scale, then it doesn't say much for our country, or the methods being used to fix it. Don't you get it, that we get it. Don't you understand that we are not phased by a person's race? Don't you get that we see a person as a person; we see them as we see ourselves.

We are that generation. We are the generation that has never learnt the old national anthem, only the new one. And you know what, it's not even something to be proud of, because it's natural, its how we were brought up. It's what we know. One can't keep on bringing up racism and apartheid as excuses. That stuff is our history now. A child born today is born into a country where everything he/she wants is available, whether they are black or white.

So maybe a little acknowledgement instead of blame, maybe a pat on the back, hey? Wait, I know, why don't you re-screen Murder She Wrote and My Little Ponies, and even more invigorating, why don't you open a packet of Ghostpops and get your hands disgustingly messy and sticky and then spend the rest of the day trying to get them out of you molars. Why, you ask yourselves, because maybe then you will see it how we do, and stop all this mindless squandering. Maybe then you will GET OVER YOURSELVES, and realise that while you are so busy putting on your expensive suits and driving your BMW's and Mercs, dismally trying to create equality in our country, that it has it has slyly sneaked up behind you. Maybe then you will realise that in the end, no one wants to fight, all we want is a chance to buy the paper and read about good rather than bad, feel safe in the dark and be able to bring our kids up in a peaceful country.

We, as a nation, might not be holistically used to the idea, as there are a lot of people unaccustomed to our way of life like my generation is, but are willing to try for the overall chance of peace and happiness. We want to live together. We don't want to fight it.

All this from opening a packet of Ghostpops. Won't Simba be astonished? But maybe, on the slight off chance that this makes it in to the hands of someone that has some influence somewhere, someone who firmly believes they are going to be the ones to fix South Africa, maybe they will hear this little voice and listen. This voice of a generation. They will hear it and see how we live in equality, and they will realise our country's future is safe. It is fixing itself. Maybe they will be able to sleep a little better tonight. Maybe they won't. Maybe they will agree with this, maybe they will use this article to line their kitty litter boxes.

And maybe, just maybe, they will embrace our positive generation, and be inspired. Then maybe they will think about buying their children a packet of Ghostpops.