The concept is medieval but the execution is very much 21st-century South Africa: a fortified town run as a miniature state. Rising from the winelands outside Cape Town, Heritage Park is enclosed by a computer-monitored fence that zaps intruders with 35 000 volts and alerts a corps of security guards.
The newly built cluster of 650 houses, two churches, two schools and several factories on the outskirts of Somerset West could claim to be the safest town in crime-plagued South Africa.
”We have taken a leaf or two out of the medieval past and placed it in our future. To be precise, we have stolen the concept of whole town fortification to create a crime-free state,” boasts the website of the developer, George Hazelden. Many apartment complexes and private homes across the country have more sophisticated security measures but Heritage Park is thought to be the first self-contained town entirely ringed by electric fencing.
The nation’s recorded rates of violent crime, though still among the world’s worst, have dropped in recent years but paradoxically the fear of being hijacked, raped and murdered has risen — and with it the obsession with security.
Heritage Park, at 200ha, slightly bigger than Monaco, is resolutely middle class. Of 1 500 residents, 1 495 are white. Beyond the fence are three townships, home to tens of thousands of poor black people and coloureds, the term given to those of mixed race. It is a brutal juxtaposition: inside the fence, pastel-coloured two-storey homes in Cape Dutch, English Tudor or Tuscan styles, neatly divided into seven suburbs with names like Beaulieu, Cape Heritage and Tuscana Close. Walk outside the wire and within metres you are in a sea of tin shacks and low-cost government-built houses.
Ashes of apartheid>/b>
The way these two communities interact reflects South Africa’s effort to build a nation on the ashes of apartheid and its legacy of gross inequality.
For Hazelden, who started Heritage Park in 1996 and plans to build another 800 homes, the solution is twofold: heavy security combined with outreach to the townships, offering work and, by extension, a reason not to storm the citadel. ”Unless these people have jobs we will still have crime problems. We are training them to be bricklayers, carpenters and painters so that they can take work here when the next development starts.”
Hazelden (61) an expatriate Briton, also built a small, new township — within the grounds of Heritage Park but outside the fence — to give better housing to 200 black and coloured families who used to squat on the land.
The success of the outreach means the security measures are becoming less necessary, he said. ”Because we’re doing so much for them even if we didn’t have the guards and the fence, I don’t think they would attack us. If in 10 years’ time we no longer have [crime] problems I’d be only too happy to take it down.” There have been no serious incidents since Heritage Park opened in 2002. To supplement the two-metre electrified pallisade and 34 guards, most homes are signed up with armed response security companies.
Gisela Jespersen, a city councillor for the white-dominated Democratic Alliance party and a member of the planning commission, praised the town as a model for other gated developments in South Africa. She also welcomed the outreach to township dwellers and said people had to be realistic about what it could achieve. ”It’s virtually impossible to integrate a community that has been divided for centuries.”
Hazelden cast the development as a form of personal redemption. In 1975 he stood for the National Front in the UK general election. Defeated by the Labour candidate in Rochester, Kent, he moved three weeks later to the cauldron of oppression, unrest and white privilege that was apartheid South Africa.
”I loved it. I thought I’d found Utopia. But I was naive. I’m trying to make up for what I didn’t see then.” Now an advocate for racial equality, the developer has forged a friendship with a black poet and writer, Mthuthuzeli Cwayi, who last month inscribed a copy of his memoir, My Life (A Blessing in Disguise): ”For George, let’s work together and teach our people how to fish.”
Redemption deadline
Hazelden was recovering from treatment for brain cancer and hinted that his redemption had a tight deadline. ”My last ambition is to get black people working. Unless we do that we will always have a crisis.”
Few disagree. Since the ANC swept to power in 1994, a black middle class has blossomed and millions of poor for the first time have been given access to decent homes, fresh water and electricity.
But depending how you count them, the unemployed comprise up to 40% of the workforce, a vast underclass mired in deplorable living conditions and seething with frustration which Archbishop Desmond Tutu has called a ”powder keg”.
In some ways Hazelden’s initiative is a paternalistic throwback to the old South Africa: free housing for blacks who labour for whites leading separate lives. But so urgent is the need for housing and jobs that no one is complaining. The 200 single-storey concrete homes Hazelden built on the perimeter of Heritage Park have indoor toilets and window panes — a dramatic improvement on draughty shacks. The question is whether residents will receive proper training and find jobs inside the fence.
The township seemed sceptical. Twelve years of democracy and black majority rule had not delivered them jobs. Could Hazelden?
Residents were polite but not enthusiastic when he visited last week. Young men and women stayed on porches listening to reggae rather than mobbing a potential employer. ”We need work, that more than anything,” said Terence Manuel (46). ”But a lot of us have been waiting our whole lives and wonder if we’ll ever really get it.” – Guardian Unlimited Â