These were ridiculously preventable crimes. One outgrowth of this kind of carelessness was the rise of opportunistic thieves who especially targeted security complexes because they know people living there were, ironically, so utterly unconscious of security once they were inside the perimeter of the keep.Īs a result, purses and mobile phones were routinely snatched off kitchen counters. My neighbors, like people in similar complexes in Johannesburg and indeed Pretoria, routinely left ground floor windows and doors to their residences wide open. The main problem we faced was the overtly casual way in which residents treated security once they were in the bosom of the compound. I lived in a complex like this in Cape Town for four years, where I sat on the body corporate, and learned firsthand the weird paradoxes of living within a maze of concrete. Not everyone surprised at Oscar Pistorius’ fall from graceīut the South African security complex like the one Pistorius owned offers the resident walls within walls. They also provide a barrier between the affluent and beggars, junk collectors, basket sellers, fishmongers and job seekers that trawl up and down the streets daily ringing bells and knocking on doors looking for handouts, some on foot and some on horse cart. The walls serve a greater purpose than deterring criminals. Walled complexes are very popular across South Africa, where most of the middle class and all of the rich live behind walls anyway. That mindset is hardly one of hair trigger fear.
But as an American who has been in the country for 20 years and lived in Johannesburg and Cape Town, I can speak about the unique mindset that comes from living behind high walls, particularly the kind of high walls Pistorius lived behind in his Pretoria security complex. I am not in the position to say whether or not Pistorius’s version of events is true. Her death is being framed in some circles as a tragic consequence of the fear wealthy South Africans live with in regard to the country’s crime, where midnight sounds in bathrooms have them scrambling for bedside weapons, shooting first and asking questions later. Earlier this year, the world learned that Oscar Pistorius, a white South African Olympian, was so filled with a “sense of terror” at the prospect of an intruder in his bathroom on Valentine’s Day eve that he, in a panic, blasted four gunshots through the door before realizing that he had killed his model girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp.
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