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done in the diamond fields, these Titans flexed their considerable muscle and muscled out the individual diggers.
    This suited the government rather nicely – as it would, considering the fact that these Boers were bankrupt. It also corresponded with the recommendations of the chief of the Mines Department, one CJ Joubert, a farmer who by all accounts didn’t know his ore from his elbow. After holding numerous meetings with diggers and mining magnates, he set out a plan which was as eerily prophetic as it was far-reaching: “We do not recommend that the fields should be thrown open to individuals as the need for costly machinery calls for a large amount of capital. There is a danger that men who have staked off good claims will be unable to work them, but be forced to leave and, through necessity, take to lawless ways.”
    And so it remains in the City of Gold. One of the few major world cities located on neither a river nor a coastline, it was founded and sustained by avarice. Sitting at 1500 metres above sea level on a wind-blown plateau, it bakes like a Christmas turkey in summer and is coated with frost most mornings in winter. The only reason people came here and continue to do so is to worship at the altar of cash in the holy house of conspicuous consumption.
    Want the money for that BMW (which in the townships stands for Break My Window), luxury apartment or diamond to melt your girl’s heart? You have two choices: learn to earn or shoot to loot. In a country where unemployment hovers around the 40 per cent mark and the social welfare system has imploded, fists, blades and bullets are for many the only means of rectifying economic disparity.
    In 1998 surveys indicated that 83 per cent of the total South African population believed the police had “zero control of crime”. When it came to simply feeling safe, 56 per cent of whites said, “Not me”, while 43 per cent of the black population felt the same way. And who could blame them? Between 1994 and 1998 the attempted murder rate climbed by 7.8 per cent, rape increased by 16 per cent (topping the world rankings), assault – and if that’s not enough, how do you like this for a qualification – with intent to produce grievous bodily harm shot up by 11 per cent and residential housebreaking soared by 17 per cent. To put this in perspective, for the 3.5 Australians murdered per 100,000 in 1996, 61 South Africans suffered the same fate.
    With the staggering amount of relative wealth concentrated in Johannesburg’s ritzy northern suburbs, it’s hardly surprising that many residents live in a perpetual state of anxiety brought on by the lifestyle they – or, as is often the case, their parents – worked so hard to attain. Homes have become citadels in which every window has bars, each door is double-bolted and the family’s bedrooms are sealed off from the rest of the house by an internal gate. On the perimeter, enormous concrete barriers masquerading as fences are topped with razor wire and spikes designed to penetrate bone. High-voltage cabling is another popular deterrent. These houses resemble that middle portion of a mozzie zapper, complete with intermittent blue sparks and a low hum.
    Many homes have panic buttons in every room and the cutting-edge electronic surveillance systems normally reserved for embassies. One alarm is all it takes for a private SWAT team bristling with high-calibre hardware to be on your doorstep within seconds. Visit one of these palatial abodes for a traditional Sunday braai (barbecue) by the pool and the topic of immigration will inevitably arise. At which point someone will counter, “But where else in the world could we live like this?” Unable to penetrate the domestic fortification, Johannesburg’s bandits lie in wait outside and attack as residents leave or return.
    Sentry boxes now stand at the top and bottom of streets I once tore along on my bike. What makes