>I know people who happily didn't live behind quite such an
>armored fortress.

The area I lived in was north Jo'burg (Randburg). It was considered metropolitan and the crime was STILL high around there. The other people in the apartment complex acknowledged that it wasn't safe to walk around after dark (like you can in Brooklyn...for the most part)


>Murder rate is high. Robbery rates are high. But let's not
>paint it like a war zone. Some neighborhoods are worse than
>others (understatement of the year).

That's the picture that was painted to me by the people in the apartment complex (edit, full disclaimer..they were mostly Sephardic Jews, Asians, whites and Indians). I didn't get brave and take any chances.

>According to this, 80% of violence is localized in small areas
>between people who know each other.
>
>http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8668615.stm


>People across the whole country have walls around their yards,
>but that's as much for petty crime as it is for murder or
>violence.

That wasn't the case at all in Durban. No one had high walls or barbed wired electric fences surrounding their lots. It felt at least 100x safer than Johannesburg did.

>There are as many bars on the windows in half the
>neighborhoods in Brooklyn as there are anywhere in SA.


>SA has a crime problem, but you don't necessarily have to live
>in a fortress with an armed guard and 8 door locks. You can,
>but you don't.

Not SA, but Johannesburg, specifically.

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