Security gates have become a part of life in so many parts of the world, whereas before security gates were only ever really seen when visiting the neighbourhoods of the rich and famous, now you cannot go into any suburb without seeing security gates in front of nearly every house. People are putting up security gates in front of everything these days.
One can understand this obsession to a certain degree when considering the high incidence of house breaking in countries like South Africa where the gap between rich and poor is very wide. People feel an obvious need to protect not just their homes but their families too. Security gates give people that feeling of safety, which home owner craves and will spend a fortune to attain.
Some folk do take the security gate fetish a bit far though; this is especially visible in South Africa where the closed estate has become the new popular option for new home owners. What the people are doing is buying homes in completely enclosed suburbs, so there is literally a wall covered with an electric fence surrounding entire suburb. This enclosed burb is policed by a team of security staff who operate not just manned security gates and booms but perform regular patrols of the enclose burb.
The rub comes when you see these homes in the secure burbs and they still have massive security gates in front of them. I can understand a fair amount of security awareness in South Africa but this is just paranoia of epic proportions. If anyone had made it through the electric fences and security gates and security staff than surely by the time they faced these domestic security gates the people inside would either have fled or killed themselves, because they would clearly be up against a very superior force.
Yet South African home owners, despite this barrage of logic, insist on erecting these enormous security gates, with the pretext of security in mind when in fact it is more of a cased of a Linus and his blanket syndrome, namely that the south home owner feels naked unless there are security gates
