SUBURBAN FEAR, MEDIA AND GATED COMMUNITIES IN DURBAN, SOUTH AFRICA

By MATTHEW DURINGTON

A disjuncture between the reality of crime and its perception has created a culture of fear within South

Africa that bolsters gated community development and an accompanying fear industry that supports media, private security companies, and a number of other industries that provide security apparatuses.

Is the establishment of gated communities an irrational response to perceptions of crime in South Africa in the twenty-first century?

Or, are they deemed necessary in a perceived culture of violence that exists in the country?

Suburbs are surrounded by conceptual and real barriers, both by their history and their continued development throughout the world.

Although not initially conceived as a popular destination to escape the ills of urban areas, and taking into account their conception as undesired spaces that result from people pushed out of cities by various social forces, residence in suburban environments is often looked upon as the end result of a path of success.

Once one lives within the “ideal” suburb, they have supposedly overcome a number of obstacles in terms of distance, class status, and perhaps even race to conceive of this social space as place, or home, with concomitant rationalizations to support their new or continued existence there.

Whereas many barriers to suburban residence have been overcome demographically if not culturally, the contemporary gated community or estate, often found within newly created or annexed suburbs throughout the world, provides visible evidence of a real suburban barrier.

The gated community and the various security mechanisms that define them visually are designed to demarcate class status and prevent access to protect residents from criminals, not necessarily to define culture.

Yet, the notion of security, fear of crime, capital, culture, and gated community residence are inextricably intertwined in media representations of these places, particularly in post-apartheid South Africa.

Almost fifteen years into the post-apartheid democratic transition in South Africa finds the government and citizenry of the country still grappling with a number of prominent and interrelated social issues including an escalating HIV/AIDS pandemic, rampant poverty, swelling unemployment and a perception that crime is out of control.

Simultaneously, South Africa has become a hotspot of global tourism and has been celebrated internationally for its peaceful transition and sustained democracy over the past several years.

Despite the goals of the government to eliminate poverty and create a non-racial society, a separation along class and racial lines has intensified in relation to residency.

A major obstacle in the plans to create an equitable society in South Africa concerns the development, construction, and availability of housing.

A correlation exists between perceptions of crime and desired residence as the majority of individuals with the means to do so are rapidly relocating to suburbs outside of urban areas and purchasing homes in gated estates emblematic of “white,” or perhaps “class” flight.

Thus, these gated communities are often seen as white cultural bastions, despite the various complexions

that may be present within the walls among residents, as they are all similar in terms of class access, lifestyle achievement, and the hopeful avoidance of crime.

MATTHEW DURINGTON is AN ASSISTANT PROFESSOR

OF ANTHROPOLOGY IN THE DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY, ANTHROPOLOGY AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE AT TOWSON UNIVERSITY.

HE HAS CONDUCTED OVER FOUR YEARS OF ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCH AND VIDEOGRAPHY IN SOUTH AFRICA, PRIMARILY IN GATED COMMUNITY ENVIRONMENTS IN THE NORTHERN SUBURBS OF DURBAN

Photo: A Tri-Cycle padlock hold a security chain over an old metal gate.