On Sprawl and Security
When people talk about South Africa being a beautiful country, they are talking about the natural beauty. After leaving architecturally rich Europe, it was quite a change to see squat, modern buildings radiating out without planning or foresight. In some ways, South Africa reminded us most of the United States out of all of the countries we’ve visited so far. The shopping malls, the need for a car, the suburban sprawl – it is all too familiar. But the sprawl in South Africa is more extreme, and what was quite different than home was the level of security. There are bars on the windows of McDonalds, even in a decent neighborhood. There are parking attendants on public streets and in private lots. Homes – and most of the guesthouses, backpackers, and B&Bs where we stayed – are hidden away in the suburbs behind tall concrete walls with coded gates and topped with electric fences. Particularly in Johannesburg, stores and restaurants – even grocery stores – are not located at street level. Instead, they are segregated away in shopping malls with pay lots. At home, you might see advertisements for home security systems, the type that might include a service to call the police if something goes amiss. In South Africa, you see advertisements for armed security, who promise to respond in minutes if there is a problem. At home, if we saw bars on the windows, we would assume we were in a bad area. In South Africa, the more bars, the better the neighborhood.
Gated walls surrounding houses in a Johannesburg neighborhood
Electric fence and coded gate at our hostel in Cape Town
Compounding the over the top security is the way the country shuts down after dark (with the exception of Cape Town). Malls, stores, and grocery stores close shortly thereafter and people disappear from the streets. Many of the backpackers (hostels) are self-contained, serving dinner and alcohol so you don’t need to go out at night. Cars leave the roads (although we heard this is because there are few street lights and lots of people and animals roaming about). Towns would empty of the loiterers who had been hanging out doing nothing in the afternoons. It was winter while we were there, so it got dark around 6 p.m. We had a car, so we still typically went out to eat after dark (otherwise we would be taking early bird specials to the extreme), but we still were left with a lot of free time in the evenings. South Africans’ tendency to scurry inside as night falls was a strange thing to get used to after being in Europe, where we often wouldn’t venture out for dinner until 8 or 9 (even later in Spain).
All of the electric fences, security gates, and bars on windows made us recall some of the advice we had heard before we arrived. Shortly before we came to South Africa, we stayed at a B&B in Northern Ireland with an owner who was originally from Durban, South Africa. When she found out we were going to South Africa next, she gave us some advice. (1) Don’t wear lots of jewelry, she said, glancing at my necklace. (2) Always, always, always lock everything in your boot (trunk) and don’t leave anything in your car, even when you are in it. (3) In certain areas, you may need to run the robot (traffic light) instead of stopping. She went on to tell us about smash’n’grabs – when someone breaks your car window while you are stopped, reaches into the car, and grabs your things. She told us it had happened to her last time she was home. Someone reached in her car window and grabbed her purse right off her lap. She described how she chased him down because she was so mad something had been stolen from her again. The week before, someone had stolen her cell phone right of her pocket. By the time she was telling us about how credit cards charge people money to get a replacement card because everyone’s cards get stolen and not to feel sorry for the little kids who are sniffing glue and begging you for money, I was wondering what in the hell we were getting ourselves into. I know people can be alarmists, but this was someone from South Africa telling us it was bad.
What we were never able to figure out in our month in the country was whether the heightened security was a necessity, or part of a long ingrained culture of fear. Instead of making us feel safer, all of the security made us feel like we constantly needed to be on guard. I knew that an unfortunate side effect to the dismantling of apartheid is the development of one of the highest levels of crime in the world – most notably, violent crime. But I never could get a good read on how bad the crime really is. I don’t know whether the crime is indiscriminate, or maybe just confined to certain subsets of the population and to certain areas. Obviously nothing happened to us while we were there, and we didn’t see any crimes occur. And thousands of people travel to South Africa without incident. Honestly, if the security measures all around us hadn’t provided constant reminders, I probably wouldn’t have worried about crime at all.
While I loved the country, it is not a country in which I would ever chose to live. We certainly felt more at ease after our first day or so, but it is hard when you have constant reminders of what could take place. I would hate to live my life, sheltered away in a suburb, constantly looking behind you, as you drive from your fenced in home to the local mall to go grocery shopping. I don’t know. Maybe people who live there are more at ease and it is not that extreme for them. I would love to understand more about what it is really like for people who live there. Crime is a sensitive subject, especially in South Africa, because it is intertwined with race and apartheid and the haves and have nots, so it tended not to come up in conversation. Even when we tried to inquire with our accommodations about whether the area was safe to walk around, the answers were evasive and coy. We were always just given reminders to use standard precautions and to “be smart.”
Don’t get me wrong: we really loved our time in South Africa. Despite creation of my own jitters at times, I never felt unsafe, and I personally would not hesitate to travel there again. But for the foreseeable future, fear of crime is an unfortunate backdrop to any travels there.
As a South African, I think this is about the best article I’ve read about the situation from a foreigner’s perspective.
I would never tell someone not to come to South Africa due to the crime rate, but I will always, always advise them of the dangers. What we consider to be common sense here are not always things foreigners realise. We’ve become so used to the situation that we consider it normal.
“I never could get a good read on how bad the crime really is. I don’t know whether the crime is indiscriminate, or maybe just confined to certain subsets of the population and to certain areas.” You only need to read local newspapers to realise that it is bad (www.news24.com). I won’t go into any more detail, because as you correctly stated, it is a sensitive subject.
For anyone planning a visit to the country, don’t let the crime frighten you away, but do make sure that you know about the do and don’t’s before you become one of our beautiful, but troubled, country’s statistics.
Sunee, thanks so much for commenting. South Africa was one of my most favorite places we visited this year, and I would go back in a heartbeat. I hope that others won’t let crime stop them from visiting, but you are right, you need to be on guard while you are there.