Carjacking: the new leader of South African crime
By Lynn Burke

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JOHANNESBURG Ayn Stratton's manicured fingers fly to her face as a silver pistol bangs loudly on the window of her shiny, candy apple-red BMW. "Get out of the car!" a male voice commands. "Get out now!"

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.

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."

Instructor Richard Brussow, who, as a police officer has seen the aftermath of carjackings gone wrong, works hard to dispel this notion. "You're a fool if you still believe this," he says firmly.

The film continues with a sequence of simulated hijacking scenes involving frightened blond women throwing their hands in the air and black bandits frantically waving AK-47s. But Brussow points out that 62% of the people hijacked in South Africa are actually black men, and cab drivers are the most vulnerable of all.

Gilbert Mlambo is a typical example. He was driving two young men to their destination in Johannesburg in early March when his passengers suddenly pointed guns at his head and told him to get out of the car. Mlambo gave up his cab without a fight. "My life was more important than my car," he says now, steering his new cab through thick traffic in downtown Johannesburg. He estimates that the loss of his 1991 Honda Palad put him out about $5,000. He has no expectations of ever seeing his car again, at least not in one piece. Like many South Africans, Mlambo believes the police are in collusion with the car-jackers. "The worst part is they're working with those guys," he says with a sigh.

Police officers in South Africa start out making only $330 a month , and some like Mlambo speculate that illegal car and parts sales supplement their income. When stolen cars are confiscated by the police throughout the city and its surrounding townships, they are deposited in a concrete expanse called "lot 13". Rows and rows of cars sit in the hot sun unclaimed, many of them stripped down to little more than steel shells.

Inspector Christopher Hatan, a portly white police officer who works out of an office abutting the car lot, says such accusations are false. The real culprits, he says, are the people living in nearby squatter camps,who sneak into the lot at night and strip the cars for parts they can later sell. "Everyone's suffering," he says sympathetically. "People are hungry, unemployed. If I was hungry I might do the same." What is unclear is exactly how people could sneak into the lot, which is surrounded by an electrical barbed-wire fence. Hatan dismisses the question with a shake of his head. "It's not always the police," he insists.

If the police force isn't the answer to the problem of car-jacking, Adele Kirsten, director of Gun Free South Africa, says stricter gun control laws could be. There are 5 million licensed gun owners in the country, and anywhere from 1 to 4 million unlicensed owners. People carry guns for security, she says, but often end up being threatened or killed with their own weapons. She says hijackers are often motivated by more that just stealing a car. "Invariably they know there's a weapon in it," she says.

And whether or not there is a weapon in the car that is hijacked, a sudden move to innocently, frantically unbuckle a seat belt could get you killed, according to Instructor Brussow. With a series of slides, demonstrations, and a real hijacking exercise at the end, he impresses upon his audience the need to stay calm. His tips are common sense: don't panic, use your left hand to remove the seat belt and open the door, keep your right hand in the air, get out of the car quickly and don't resist. "Learn to surrender your car," he says, "and not your life."