Flame-throwers under the car, handbags with electrically charged traps and exploding number plates are all part of the modern South African property owner's arsenal in the eternal battle against crime.
South African inventors have gained a global reputation for effective, if often bizarre, deterrents to criminals. Their wares have just been shown at the Securex trade exhibition in the country's crime capital, Johannesburg.
"Q," James Bond's gadget supplier, would have been astounded at the array of equipment that has come onto the market in response to government efforts to tighten up on the use of firearms.
One of the latest hits is a paintball gun that fires pepper spray under pressure. The cumbersome guns are generally used for war games in which opponents are shot with a paintball to show they have been put out of action.
"Our solution is much easier to use," says Byron Hove, pointing to the metal boxes made by his company Changing Tides. They contain cartridges that can be detonated by remote control, suggesting to any intruder that he or she is coming under fire.
"They can be placed in any tree and confuse anyone breaking in, who thinks someone is shooting at him from behind," Hove says.
The police were impressed by another of his inventions aimed at scaring off intruders rather than maiming or killing them: a padlock that gives off a loud bang when it is fiddled with.
A sensor that picks up vibrations triggers a charge inside the lock. "It is not the strongest lock on the market, but it works in an intelligent fashion," Hove says with a laugh. "It's not always the strongest that win."
Other gadgets on show at Securex were miniature CCTV cameras, infrared sensors, movement sensors, biometric controls at gates using finger pressure and lasers. These hi-tech tools that used to be 007's preserve are now standard for wealthy South Africans.
Precise figures are hard to come by, but sector insiders believe that up to 270,000 people could be involved in providing security at a cost to the economy of more than US$2 billion.
Rosemary Cowan of the South African Security Association comments that the companies involved are by their very nature discreet about their activities.
There have long been more privately employed security guards than there are police offices, with around 5,000 different companies competing in this lucrative sector.
Their activities range from providing an old-fashioned night watchman, through tracking cars by satellite or guarding the entrances to gated residential complexes protecting the well-off from the great mass of poor people outside.
Private security companies are providing the services that the official security services cannot. And their clientele is by no means solely white any more. The rising black middle class is vulnerable too.
Even the South African police have employed private security personnel to protect its headquarters.
Large companies in centers like Johannesburg are paying for the senior management -- along with their families -- to be protected.
This ranges from providing bodyguards and armor-plated limousines to ensuring that their homes lie in sealed suburbs, where anyone entering has to pass a security gate.
There has been intense public debate about this "new kind of apartheid" which allows the rich to live entirely apart from the poor, but gated complexes are booming.
Despite the effort and expenditure, crime continues to plague South Africa. Electronic gadgets fail to operate or security guards fall asleep on the job.
Hove has a solution to the latter: a gadget that looks like an automatic shoe polisher common in hotels. The guard has to depress the pedal once every 30 minutes, or an ear-splitting siren rends the night air.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was