Bad Thing About Living in South Africa #1

Crime is always on your mind.
I thought I would post this in response to Blake's comment about driving safely in South Africa. Crime is a tremendous problem in South Africa. If you travel here and manage to escape without having anything stolen, the omnipresent razor wire fences, security guards, and general paranoia of crime will certainly drive home this message to any American visitor. Having traveled and been robbed in South Africa previously, I have been overly cautious in my time here so far.

Just to give an example, the house we live in is surrounded by 10 foot tall fences with electric wiring along the top (that provide quite a shock to anyone who would touch them). The house itself has an alarm system, but also sports a system of optical beams around the perimeter. These make it essentially impossible to move throughout the yard without setting off an alarm. Despite all this, our landlords discouraged us from keeping our surfboards strapped to our car overnight for fear that they would be stolen.

As for driving around, we typically take these precautions. Never drive any a questionable area of town after dark. This is difficult as sometimes you dont really know what areas are dangerous and which are safe. We always lock our doors, no matter where we go. We always keep ANYTHING in the trunk when we travel. No lunches, CD's, and certainly any bags or electronics are anywhere in the car. The "smash n' grab" is a popular affair here where someone smashes your window and reaches in to steal your bag/t-shirt/ipod/lunch/dirty socks. Finally, to also prevent this, we usually crack the windows just a hair to make it hard to smash. We've been lucky so far, but we also have a rule that if anyone asks us for anything, we'll simply hand it over. No need to risk a life for your wallet or cell phone.

Its obvious that there is a heightened perception of crime in South Africa. Indeed, its one of the first things any local will warn you about when you first arrive. But I wondered if these concerns were warranted. Based strictly on anecdotal evidence, I would tend to agree. So I looked up some statistics on nationmaster.com (which bases their crime data on the Seventh United Nations Survey of Crime Trends and Operations of Criminal Justice Systems). I found the following pretty interesting.

In a survey of all UN countries, South Africa ranks:

• #1 in manslaughters per capita
• #2 in murders per capita
• #1 in murders with firearms per capita
• #1 in rapes per capita
• #4 in robberies per capita

So it seems that much of the concern over crime is valid. However, I should note that South Africa came in only at 10th behind the USA and the UK in total crimes per capita. Seems somewhat contradictory.

So while crime is a real problem here, all you can do is make efforts to reduce your risk and hope for the best. Kylie and I are extremely careful and do our best not to take any chances (so try not to worry parents).