Canyons of Stone

It’s hard to convey what it’s like moving through a suburban landscape that is almost entirely walled off from view. It’s even harder to imagine the mindset of people living behind the high walls and electric fences.
But these are the same people who’ll argue angrily that South Africa is a great country, despite the fact that they’re having to seal themselves in at night, for their own safety.
 

It’s hard to convey visually - or photographically - the reality of what it feels like, moving along through long streets, and to be able to see nothing more, than an endless series of high walls on both sides of you.
It’s difficult to show, the sensation of claustrophobia that gradually descends after you’ve traveled for many miles, and it slowly dawns on you, that you’ve seen almost no houses, no gardens, and very few people walking.

Let me show you South African ’suburbia’.

Take this example of a South African home in Johannesburg. There’s the ever-present armed guard sign on the wall, and the walls stretch off into the distance, alongside the road.

Or this next example, for instance. And remember that this is ’suburbia’ - this isn’t an urban area, in a city. These aren't photographs taken in some walled off industrial downtown urban area - this is South Africa’s idea of a glorious life in the ‘burbs.

These domestic prisoners (because that’s what they obviously are) living behind these walls, will often talk about South Africa being a wonderful country.

It's hard to see how they can know this  - given the heights of the walls they’re surrounded by.

In case you think this has anything to do with ethnic origins - it doesn’t. Almost all local folk, who achieve success in South Africa, regardless of their ethnic origins, tend to migrate towards either these massively barricaded homes, or the ‘cluster home’ concept.

Indeed, ’success’ in South Africa, means having the ability to buy more stuff to keep you occupied and distracted from the fact that you’re locked in a house-and-garden-sized prison cell, and can’t stroll anywhere casually, for fear of being murdered.

Here’s another lovely home and garden.

And here’s a clearer example of the ‘canyons of stone’ aspect on both sides of you, as you drive in South African suburbia. The walls to either side. No homes visible, no gardens, no people, nothing but cement, and total isolation.

Here’s more, further down that road. Still nothing visible, except tree’s and high security walls.
This is the view that you don’t see in the tourism brochures. A ’society’ that’s empty, alienated, threatened, and cowering for the most part, behind insanely elaborate security features, in order to stay alive, and tell themselves that the new democracy is working.

More streets, more walls..

This is a world where children don’t play outside, where there are almost no walking people (unless they’re servants) - and no walkers at all, once night time descends.

Try and imagine what its like in these canyons of silent, high walled streets, once the darkness descends at night, given how empty these photographs show it to be during daytime.

This is the actual reality of living in a country where between 70 - 120 or more murders a day happen - and where it's common knowledge that you can’t rely on the police force to protect you (or even arrive) if there’s a problem. (Hence the rise in '24 Hour Armed security firms').

Forget whatever imagery you may have soaked up about Africa or South Africa, thanks to massively costly PR-campaigns mounted in the West to sell South Africa and its Government. The idea that the defeat of Apartheid was the end of the story.

It was only the beginning.

See what it looks like, when a society slides slowly towards total civil disintegration. I understand that the slow gradual disintegration of a modern society, into an urban prison camp existence, isn’t ’sexy’ enough for global news coverage, unfortunately.

People seem to only be interested in some long-gone delusion of a non-existent ‘Africa’ that only ever lived in movies. People want the Lion King, I think. They want Brad and Angelina, having brief holidays in other peoples misery.  Or else, buoyed up by Alex Hailey's 'Roots' thumbsuck, they want the glorious imagery of majestic plains and Oprah-friendly animals.

They don't want the complexity of CIA covert warfare across Africa for decades, or the multinational corporations funding coups and assassinations, or deliberate debt enslavement and financial blackmail by the IMF and the World Bank.

They want nice pretty landscapes, with a suitably photogenic African child or two, in the frame. And that's usually the extent of their willingness to understand.

South Africa is the most advanced country in Africa. Well, at least in terms of those things that the West considers normal. Roads, infrastructure, telecommunications.

But this is also a tiny impersonal glimpse of what happens, when a country is run by a Government that doesn't seem to be interested in its citizens., and worst of all, appears to be as race-obsessed in many ways,  as the regime it took over from.

The chaos, and civil unrest and Terror increases imperceptibly, year after year. Until the only method of staying alive, is to wall yourself off and hope for the best.

In the picture below, note how two walls merge - the electric fence on the wall at left, and the neighbors wall - with its jagged wall spikes, at right.

This is also a country where 600 people die every day, from a sexually transmitted disease. Every day.
One has to wonder what kind of people are in power here - and how they could be content to waffle on, day after day, year after year - doing nothing to radically alter the society where this daily death toll was happening.

Below: Part of a golf course near where I stayed, was abruptly the scene of massive construction work, and slowly but surely, another ‘cluster development’ began being built.

Here’s the great view remaining, to travelers, alongside the road..

“I raise my face in this arid wilderness of steel and stone...”

-Anton LaVey.