I visited South Africa (Johannesburg) for the only time about 13 years ago for an IT conference.
Fantastic place of mixed culture, but the contrast of poor versus the rest was shocking. Indeed, razor wire and tall fences surrounded most middle class neighbourhoods that I saw when traveling from place to place.
Everyone we met (when discussing safety) admitted to owning guns and going to all sorts of other extremes for their safety - one guy had a second alarm system just for his bedroom (with a gun in his side drawer) after his wife and he had been held at gunpoint previously. Just about everyone seems to have had either a first hand experience of crime, or have a relative who has been impacted - either held up, or worse.
At the time, Johannesburg (CBD) was a no go zone for many businesses - certainly the corporate IT, Banking and other big sectors had relocated to a suburb called Sandton, some 10kms away. We were told there were uninhabited skyscrapers in original Johannesburg CBD.
Our trip from the airport to Sandton included a sudden stop when some land squatters on the side of the motorway suddenly piled a whole lot of branches and tyres on the road and set them alight, stopping 3-4 lanes of traffic. Finally, only minutes away from this new Corporate hub was a "township" called Alexandra. Take the wrong turn and depending upon the time of day/night, you'd be in big trouble if getting lost in Alexandra. An amazing, yet sad contrast between the Business Hub of Johannesburg and a place where many lived in tin huts with no amenities to speak of - only minutes apart.
While on one trip to a Cheetah Sanctuary outside of Johannesburg, our car was suddenly seized upon by 2 or 3 guys as we were waiting for traffic lights to change on the outskirts of the city. The driver ignored the traffic lights and put peddle to the metal, otherwise, who knows...?
Stayed in a fancy hotel in Sandton, connected to the main Convention Centre, with a massive shopping complex below.
One thing that stood out in this Hotel/Convention centre was the abundance of black staff in immaculate uniforms every 5 metres or so doing menial jobs, like spraying plastic plants with water mist, or trimming the carpet - obviously all part of Black Empowerment (union enforced labour) at the time. At our conference dinner (perhaps 500 people), each table had its own drinks and food waiters. I'll never forget our drinks waiter (by the name of Trifection) was desperate for us to take him back to Australia with us - he did not know anything about IT, but guaranteed he would be our hardest worker - working 3-5 days a month and on miniscule wages was obviously very tough.
A place where many from other African countries come in seek of supposedly a better life, work etc, but when faced with the reality, I guess crime and violence were/are the result.
Obviously things have changed somewhat since 2000, but violence remains. Hopefully the place is improving.
Back to the point of this thread:
That was one place where owning a gun for one's own protection is clearly justified and an unfortunate fact of life. Society is clearly more amped than in most parts of Australia. Pretorius may be an unfortunate victim of circumstances, but I guess we will find out soon.
Once again, we are lucky we live where we do. Political Correctness is almost non-existent (at least the way we see it) in these contrasting places. We tend to view and judge the rest of the world based on our own conditioning - however its definitely not that straightforward.
...and that was SA (Johannesburg) - what about places like Nigeria, Kenya etc - surely even more difficult!
