South African people love their security gates. This is not just because of crime or the fear of an invasion. South African people love security gates because they tell the world that whatever is on the other side of the security gates belongs to them. This is why you will find security gates in places in South Africa where you do not really need them.
The trend in South Africa at the moment is for people to turn normal suburbs into gated communities and basically run an electric fence around the entire burb. Given the fact you have armed security guards walking around 24 hours day and the six foot high electric fence, why would anyone still feel the need for security gates. Surely if some evil force managed to get past all the other security measures that are in place, they would not let a puny security gate stand in their way.
Some people might argue that the gates are there for privacy reasons and they do not want people just wandering through their plots, like lost cows, but if this were the case would a simple hedge not have done just as good a job. Nothing fully explains the need to have elaborate security gates when one is living in a secure complex, because surely the estate agents would run some kind of check on whomever they were selling or letting the property to, nothing too invasive, but a routine background check would not be considered by anyone to unfair.
However south Africans do live in country that for years held the record for the highest violent crime rate in the world, so a certain amount of paranoia is allowed, because even though things in South Africa are getting better every day, there is still quite a lot of crime happening, and people feel that their security gates keep them safe. This is why it is going to take a long time before South Africans abandon their beloved security gates and just let the world in to the homes that they treasure, because the fear that they feel is so real.
