Backstory: In South Africa, home sweet fortress

Marius, a pot-bellied security-alarm technician, yells to his assistant up in our attic, who is staring at a box with flashing red lights. "OK, Boet, I'm going to arm the system," he says. As he presses the four-button security code, I hold my breath.

"Right, now step out into the room," he says to me, "and see if that sets off the alarm."

In theory, the infrared beams scattered throughout our rental house should trip a silent alarm that will bring an armed guard from the Stalag-17-style, electric-fenced community – with, I should add, a lovely duck pond, clubhouse, tennis courts, playgrounds, and walking trails – where my family and I have chosen to live. (I say in theory because I haven't the faintest idea how to turn the system on.)

I step into the room, and the eyebeam in our living room spots me. Just 2-1/2 minutes later, there's a sharp knock at the door, and a shout: "Security here! Is everything OK?"

In South Africa, nothing says "Home Sweet Home" like 10-foot walls, electric fencing, burglar bars, and at least one panic button wired directly to an armed-response team, licensed to shoot, if not kill. It's not the sort of thing you put in a tourist brochure. But South Africa, statistically speaking, is one of the most dangerous places in the world to live.

As recently as 1998, according to a report by Interpol, the country had the highest recorded per capita murder rate in the world – with 59 homicides per 100,000 people, followed by Colombia with 56. The US, by comparison, had 6. Also in 1998, South Africa had a high recorded rate of robbery and violent theft.

South African government officials like to point out that the number of crimes is declining – particularly murder, which they say has dropped every year since 1994. In a country of 40 million people, the number of homicides dipped from 21,553 in 2003 to 19,824 in 2004, for instance. Still, the US had 293 million people in 2004 and fewer murders (16,150).

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It doesn't help that many of the homicides occur at home, which only fuels the paranoia of those who worry about that noise in the yard late at night (and no, dear, I'm not talking about you). Nearly 35 percent of males and 55 percent of female victims of homicide were killed in a private home or yard. The majority of murders continue to be black on black, with the townships being most at risk. The biggest fear of whites in the suburbs remains property crime.

The local press does its best to highlight the problem, telling residents about the latest military-style daylight robbery of an armored vehicle at a posh suburban mall. Dinner parties bring the sense of danger one step closer to home, with the inevitable game of "guess who got robbed this week."

Elite private schools get into the act, too. Our daughters recently took part in a "duck and cover" drill. The enemy wasn't Russian ICBMs like in the good old 1950s, but roving gangs of thieves. While the principal banged on the doors of every classroom, my daughters took cover under desks and inside cubbyholes meant for their backpacks and rubber boots. Teachers locked the doors and asked for silence.

Coming to Johannesburg, from New Delhi, has been a bit of a smelling salt. In New Delhi, the most I ever had to think about crime was to lock the door at night. That's more than our "night guard" ever did. He would fall asleep precisely at 10 p.m. on my landlord's garden furniture. Sometimes we had to wake him in the morning (but, ah, he did salute us smartly when he got up).

The first people we met in Johannesburg made a big impression on us. One, an ethnic Indian businessman, shocked us with a story of his home being robbed by armed men, who terrorized his 3-year-old child and the nanny.

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