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Nelson Mandela has ended the segregation in South Africa from the legal perspective, but the the idea of segregation still exists in people's mind. [Maverick Chen / China.org.cn]

In Johannesburg, where Du used to live, violent crime rates are even higher than the national average. The crime ratio of reported cases of theft from cars, similar to what happened to Du, in Gauteng, which includes Johannesburg, is 372 per 100,000 people. And often, as in Du's case, the culprits are never caught.

Many South Africans see the high rate of violent crime as a legacy of apartheid. Blame is also assigned to widespread poverty and extreme levels of inequality. Black South Africans, who make up almost three-quarters of Johannesburg's 4 million residents, live mostly on the outskirts of the metropolitan area, including lower-class neighborhoods like Soweto and slums like Alexandra. The middle-class, however, are able to protect themselves in fortress-like gated communities, with high-perimeter walls, electric fences and 24-hour armed guards standing watch.

Faced with the terror of so much crime, Johannesburg residents and businesses have adapted their lives to protect themselves. Drivers cruise the streets with their car windows up. Small shops are often closed by 5 p.m. to prevent robberies, while financial institutions have installed a double set of doors, between which a buffer zone allows only one person through at a time. Banks also prohibit the use of mobile phones, because as one Johannesburg native explained, "robbers might use the imbedded cameras to film people who withdraw cash and send the images to people waiting outside."

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