In the meantime, the killing has highlighted South Africa's history of gun violence and high crime. And it's shown the world that many South Africans live with a palpable, almost paranoid, fear of having their homes broken into. In the past year, more than 50% of South Africans
told the country's police force that they're afraid. The number of home burglaries across the country of 50 million have more than doubled. They totaled 9,063 in a 12-month period spanning 2002/2003; seven years later, it was up 18,786. And in a similar period ending in 2012, reported break-ins dipped to 16,766, according to South Africa's crime reporting body,
the Institute for Security Studies.
"The paranoia about being a victim of a house robbery is understandable," said the group's
small arms researcher Lauren Tracey. "Victims are relatively helpless against these attacks."
It's common to see armed guards patrolling gated, middle-class neighborhoods.
Hiring a private security firm is not the exception but the norm. Workaday people install panic buttons, closed-circuit televisions,
man trap doors,
boom gates and outdoor point-to-point infrared motion-sensing beams on their houses.
Also unique to South Africa: When burglars break in, they likely aren't after a flat-screen television or jewelry, experts say. They want the homeowner's guns.
That's in part because it's very hard to acquire a gun legally in South Africa, but it remains, many say, relatively easy to get a gun illegally.
To understand South Africa's gun culture,
it's crucial to go back nearly two decades. In 1994,
apartheid ended. The official system of racial segregation, in place since 1948, took rights away from black Africans and gave virtually all power in every aspect of life to whites.
For generations, violence born out of apartheid spawned a kind of arms race; blacks and whites fought against each other, and everyone else armed themselves, afraid to be caught in the cross fire.
The law isn't perfect. As
one South African correspondent put it, guns are still very much a part of the culture. Signs at South African airports and casinos point to where consumers should drop off their weapons.
And gun ownership advocates say that is why people are still incredibly afraid of hearing someone creeping in their house at night.
There are about 2,000 guns stolen from legal gun owners in South Africa every month, according to Gun Free South Africa.
Between April 2005 and March 2011, more than 18,000 police firearms were
reportedly stolen or lost. Guns have
gone missing from police stations.
And there's little reason for armed burglars to think they'll be caught and punished. The rate of arrest and prosecution in the country is 7%, said former detective
Rudolph Zinn, who wrote a book about home invasions and now trains South African police.
He believes there's one chief reason for that: Few South Africans trust law enforcement because in recent years, the police force has become politicized, with higher ranking officers who are politically appointed.
"There was a distrust related to our heritage," he says, referring to apartheid, "and unfortunately, over the years, we've gone back to that. I saw it often when I was a detective.
There are undoubtedly more home invasions, he said, than are officially counted.
"People don't even want to report a crime," he said, "because they don't believe anything is going to come of it."
