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Carjacking:
the new leader of South African crime
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| People
here live in varying degrees of fear. Newspaper headlines scream of
grisly crimes daily, and murder rates are among the highest in the
world -- two per hour, according to South African Police Services.
In this climate of terror, those who can afford it outfit their homes
with barbed wire fences, spike-capped walls and electric security
systems. They protect their families with armed response teams, who,
when called, quickly rush to the scene of the crime.
No one drives around with unlocked doors, and women are advised to keep rolling when they come to a red light at night. Some people take the risk of carjacking so seriously they outfit their cars with specially-designed flame throwers that can torch nearby assailants at the push of a button (located near the foot pedals). So for those who drive luxury cars like BMWs, which insurance companies say run the most serious risk of being hijacked, $35 for this course may seem like a small price to pay for a little peace of mind. The class begins in a darkened auditorium with a film that opens with a scene of a young, white woman identified only as "Cara." Several of the 16 audience members visibly grimace as the camera zooms in on her face, bringing into focus her left eye , which has been mutilated by close-range gunfire during a car jacking. Cara recounts her grim ordeal. "I panicked," she says. "He pulled my head out and pulled the trigger. What could I have done differently?" she asks. Horror-movie music begins to play softly in the background, and the narrator welcomes his audience to the hijack-prevention course. "There is a vicious threat out there," the voice intones. "Survive it. You are the key to your own survival in this daily horror." The course started five years ago and last year saw a full 5,000 people enroll. Some participants sign up on their own, hoping to better prepare themselves for what seems like the inevitable. Others, like Jochen Voehrer, an engineer from Germany who recently moved to Pretoria, take the course because of the insurance write-off offered by BMW. Otherwise, he says, he wouldn't have bothered with the course because he doesn't think car-jacking will happen to him. "Maybe I'm lulled to a false sense of security," he admits. "It always happens to someone else." |
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