Wealthy Johannesburg suburbs won the right to seal themselves off against crime on Thursday, despite claims that this marks a return to the no-go areas of the apartheid era.
The city council approved requests from dozens of communities to close their roads with barriers staffed by private guards to monitor and control access.
Advocates described this as a necessary and effective measure to counter the murders, burglaries and car hijackings which plague South Africa’s commercial capital.
But critics said the gates, fences and booms were a throwback to the racist controls on the movement of black people.
The council steered a middle-course by rejecting almost as many requests as it approved and suspending judgement on dozens of others.
In the past decade, residents of suburbs such as Sandton, Midrand and Kensington have blocked off 2 548 streets and hired uniformed guards to question pedestrians and motorists trying to enter.
Evidence that the booms reduce crime boosted their popularity, but as more areas of the city became gated critics compared them to feudal castle keeps.
After the debate had involved the Human Rights Commission and seemed likely to involve the constitutional court, the city council intervened and said residents needed to seek permission to keep barriers.
The roads agency received 324 applications, some in-volving dozens of barriers, for 309 existing schemes and 15 new ones.
The executive mayor, Amos Masondo, said 46 of the applications, covering 1 266 households, had been approved and 38 rejected.
The rest had been referred to the police to see whether crime really had fallen as a result of the closures.
”We seek to ensure effective regulations and management of road closures and to ensure that people have access to all public facilities and to the relevant infrastructure,” he said.
Communities were being told on Thursday whether their applications had succeeded. Those rejected had 10 days to appeal, after which the barriers would be removed.
A roads agency spokesperson, Mavela Dlamini, said suburbs allowed to keep booms were subject to stringent conditions to protect freedom of movement. Guards could not search pedestrians or vehicles or oblige people to register or supply personal information, he said.
Open City Forum, which opposes the closures, is expected to continue campaigning.
Advocates of the barriers deny that there are echoes of apartheid, pointing out that many residents of gated communities are black and share the security concerns of white neighbours. The mayor is reported to be one of them. – Guardian Unlimited Â