"Everything has changed -- people's attitudes, the service in shops, it's not the same," he says.
On the contrary, lament black leaders, one crucial thing has stayed the same: the refusal of many whites to admit past sins.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a Nobel peace laureate, recently said the privileged minority that once feared retribution had not shown enough gratitude for peaceful inclusion in a multi-racial democracy.
Bust East London does boast at least one white advocate of racial harmony: Van Schoor's daughter, Sabrina, 25. While her father was in jail she shocked the white community by dating black men and giving birth to a mixed-race child.
In 2002, in a grisly irony, she hired a black man to slit her mother's throat, claiming she was a racist bully.
Convicted of murder and sent to the same prison as her father, Sabrina van Schoor is seen as a martyr by some black people. She is popular among fellow inmates at Fort Glamorgan jail.
Speaking through iron bars, Sabrina says she is nervous about her family coming under public scrutiny again because of the book.
"I'm afraid it might open old wounds," she says.
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