This is how the New York Times in its obituary of Mandela refers to the history of racial domination and cruelty in South Africa

"he seemed to have genuinely transcended the racial passions that tore at his country", 1) Racial passions? Is this a euphemism for racial hatred? 2) when it says "racial passions" it makes the history of South Africa blameless, that there is no one side that is victim and another that is guilty.  3) By racial passions, the New York Times wants to romanticize the racial hatred of whites in South Africa.