Gated communities and ethnic cleansing in South Africa

Whites in South Africa view crime as a type of ethnic cleansing:

White South Africans living in gated communities think of crime as a type of ethnic cleansing forcing them into semi-migration, a study on the subject showed yesterday.

The study was presented at an international symposium on gated communities or townhouses, held at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research's (CSIR) convention centre here.

"Crime is a form of ethnic cleansing," was one of the statements from newspaper excerpts discussed at the symposium yesterday.

The study, titled "Fear and Loathing in Johannesburg: constructing new identities within gated communities", described gated communities as having emerged in response to a sense of embattlement.

They were a response to a series of failures in local state capacity, the rule of law and a reduced sense of citizenship.

One of the study's authors, Alex Wafer, a researcher at the University of the Witwatersrand, said the idea of crime as a form of ethnic cleansing was articulated some years ago by a resident of such a community in an open letter to the Sandton Chronicle, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and the United Nations.

"Within the old and new white elite in Johannesburg has emerged a dream of living in a westernised, European environment," said Teresa Dirsuweit, the study's other author.

More evidence that multiracial societies don't work in the real world.