Carjacking: the new leader of South African crime
By Lynn Burke
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She winces and fumbles with the lock, struggling to remember all the tips she has just learned at BMW Advanced Driving School 's anti-hijacking class, which is taught by a bald, scowling ex-police officer of 13 years who has survived six car-jackings. Her hijacker's voice on this sunny afternoon is familiar, his pistol pretend, but the exercise rattles her nonetheless.

Stratton is voluntarily participating in this drill because she's been through it before, only with real hijackers who wielded real guns. She, her husband and their 18-month-old daughter were pulling into the driveway of their gated home in a wealthy suburb outside the city when four men pulled up behind them in a white van and surrounded the car. "They stormed up with guns and started frisking my husband, started taking his watch, his chain, his wallet, that sort of thing," she remembers. "I immediately said to the guys, 'look, they can take the car, please don't shoot, I just want to remove the baby'."

But she didn't stop there. Her car was full of birthday presents for their son, and she talked her aggressors into letting her go back twice to remove her packages. Stratton was lucky. "I've realized now what could of happened," she says, "what could have gone wrong."

As South Africa prepares for its second post-apartheid elections this June, violent crimes like carjackings are on everyone's mind. In the United States, just under 50,000 car hijackings are attempted each year, according to the Department of Justice, and rarely is anyone murdered in a car-jacking (27 per year). In South Africa, which has the highest hijacking rate in the world, it's a different story. In a country of just over 40 million people, there were approximately 16,000 car hijackings (18 times as great as the U.S. rate) according to the South African Safety and Security Ministry. And for every 280 car-jackings, one person is murdered.

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