It is a scene reminiscent of Beirut or Belfast - cities that have been through the ravages of war.
The residential communities are barricaded behind high walls, razor wire and electric fences. Around-the-clock armed guards secure the single entrances and exits to these vast, walled "suburban prisons," as many of the mostly white - and now almost always terrified - residents sometimes refer to them.An explosion of violent crime has transformed Johannesburg's rolling suburbs into fortresses where residents are prisoners of fear - terrified of the criminals that one senior police officer says threaten to turn South Africa into a gangster society.
But in the black communities, especially the squatter camps that have mushroomed around big cities since majority rule began two years ago - violence is even more prevalent than in mostly white neighborhoods and the countermeasures more extreme.
Residents gang up on thugs, beat them and then take them to police. They openly threaten to lynch criminals who reappear in their communities. Some black residents have done just that - locked criminals preying on their communities inside houses and burned them to death.
These community-action programs in the white and black areas are among desperate attempts by residents to protect their lives and fortunes against an onslaught of violent crime that has made South Africa one of the world's most dangerous countries and Johannesburg the world's undisputed mur-der capital.
The massive violence has overwhelmed police and threatens the stability of President Nelson Mandela's democratic government. It also frightens investors indispensable to South Africa's eco-nom-ic development.
"Quite simply, we have a culture of violence," said Graeme Simpson, director of the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, an independent research and educational institute affiliated with the University of Wits-waters-rand in Johannesburg.
"We are talking of a political structure in which both sides allowed violence to be socially approved - ANC resistance and apart-heid repression."
Simpson said South Africa is still paying the price of its recent violence. Mandela's African National Congress was trying to overthrow the white government by force and the apartheid regime used brutal violence to remain in power and keep the ANC - and the black majority - at bay.
"This is a society coming out of this dastardly period when there was a high level of political violence," Simpson said. "You have got politics breaking down old forms of control without putting in place a new form of control. It provides a window for criminals. The level of political violence dropped, and criminal violence rose dramatically."
The nation's police chief, George Fivaz, a Mandela appointee, warns that South Africa is in danger of becoming a "gangster state."
Police statistics released in April show that South Africa, with a population of about 45 million people, had 18,983 homicides in 1995 - an average of 52 a day. By comparison, the United States, with about 264 million people, reported 21,400 homicides in 1995 - about 59 a day.
Other statistics released by police showed a rape was committed every 30 minutes in South Africa, a car was stolen every 9 minutes, and an armed robbery was committed every 11 minutes.
South Africa's murder rate increased in 1995 despite a decline in political homicides in the Kwa-Zu-lu-Na-tal Province in eastern South Africa around Durban - a clear sign of the rise of criminally motivated violence.
There are new crimes, too. Car hijackings, a crime that often ends in murder here, have soared. Criminals can buy AK-47 assault rifles for less than $100 or rent one for a few dollars a day.
Carjacking is the main reason why residents of Hurlingham Manor in northern Johannesburg decided to close off streets and seek government permission to wall off the suburb. Hurlingham Manor has 504 houses in the $250,000 price range.
"Hijacking was the big fear," said Dale Stevens, head of the Hur-ling-ham Manor Ratepayers Association. "People were driving around with guns on their laps. We were having eight or 10 hijackings a month."
Since the suburb barricaded streets and hired armed guards to patrol the neighborhood in November, Stevens said, "armed hijackings have gone to zero" and burglaries have dropped from 30 to 10 a month.
Shooting of residents by criminals also has dropped, Steven said.
"There had been two or three killed," he said. "A lot of people I know have been shot and wounded."
Across the street from Hur-ling-ham Manor, Buysisile Gana, a private security guard for Armed Response, stops vehicles as they enter the only open street into the smaller suburb of Willowild. If a vehicle fails to stop for identification, Gana presses a button and an Armed Response mobile unit with guns at the ready is on the scene within 2 minutes.
"Last year when we came here there was a crime problem," Gana said. "There is no crime problem now."
Willowild, a residential area of about 200 houses valued at several hundred thousand dollars each, put up walls and hired Armed Response guards in December.
It also was in December when Daniel Rabie, ex-officio mayor of the Mandela squatter camp in So-we-to, visited a group of eight young men living together in one of the camp's 2,000 shacks. Rabie warned the eight that the community was fed up with their robberies and assaults.
"They said, `Let them come,' " Rabie related.
"More than 200 went to the home," Rabie said. "They beat the eight young men up. I said, `Don't kill them, let's take them to the police station."'
The crowd agreed to that, but Rabie said the community sent the police a message "to say we don't want to see them released. If they are released it will be the government's responsibility, and we will kill them. If they get their release they are going to sentence themselves to death."
Mandela's government, business groups and civic associations are engaged in massive efforts to try to curb the soaring crime rate. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has even opened an office in South Africa to try to stem a flood of narcotics pouring in.
Violence center director Simpson warns that crime will get worse before it gets better.
"Government looks for quick fixes," he said. "I don't think there are any. The crime problem is entrenched in a long process. It is going to take a long time."
Simpson said only reform of the "criminal justice system as a whole" will reduce crime substantially.
"We have a major problem with corruption," he said. "It is public knowledge that you can buy a dock-et, you can buy a cop. You can buy a judge."
But for many South Africans, both black and white, the hope is to buy some peace and safety.
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ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
What's in a name?
Anthony Mba, a Nigerian, filed a $1.1 million harassment suit against a Brooks Brothers store in West Hartford, Conn., after a clerk refused to honor his American Express Gold Card, saying, "C'mon, that's not your name, that's a degree."