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Comment by vessenes | Hacker News Reader

This was interesting but I don't know if semiotics is a large part of the essay. I was hoping to get a deconstruction of barbed wire fence as a security measure in different parts of the world. My experience living in South Africa for a while was that to an American eye, barbed wire on top of a wall codes as "this neighborhood is unsafe". To a South African it codes as "this home is protected and safe" -- very different reactions. There were a few houses in my neighborhood in Cape Town that refused barbed wire, and I always respected them immensely and thought of them as sort of hold-overs from a less violent period in the country's history.

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In SA, barbed wire is a good start. You’ve left off electric fence, cameras, manned boom gates and security company. And security WhatsApp groups. What am I missing? Some have guns or double layers of the above. Many live in security complexes inside the fenced off areas. Oh yes, burglar bars. And security alarm linked to the security company.

The above doesn’t always work. You need to ensure the gates can’t be crowbarred off. Happened to us a few times. The amount of IQ allocated to breaking in is amazing. Serious innovation on the criminal side. Think of your smartest friends very keen to get into your house and working together for years on how to do it.

What.... What happened to SA? Is there a unique set of circumstances that gave rise to this particular kind of violent lawlessness?

Quite a few contributing factors: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iiny1GrfhYM

Top recipe: you force some people to have a very shit life, selection based on race. Some lawlessness is naturally bred and in some cases encouraged. You then take away the rules that made it shit but you leave the economic, societal and mental damage of a polarised society. You start uplifting people but you mainly focus on a small group and do little to help most people. You allow education to go south because teachers are unionised and you want their votes. You demonstrate corruption at the highest levels and then dismantle the parts of the law meant to fight it. You let the economy grow too slowly because you’re so focused on cutting pieces of the pie for yourself that you forget to grow it. You let public health and policing go to waste, so only wealthy have access to good healthcare, education, security. You break the electricity generation capacity through corruption. Poverty never really gets fixed because a kid in a rural village has a massive hill to climb to be economically active. You also add other broken countries nearby so you end up with a lot of job seekers. Add some resentment of those people.

The kids who make it through all that to e.g. get a job in a bank are absolute heroes.

Great question. https://www.amazon.com/History-South-Africa-Fourth/dp/030018... is an excellent book that digs in on this and other topics about SA if you’re interested in learning more about this extremely complex question and country. As residents often say, it’s especially a heartbreak because the country has so much going for it.

America, except the natives you stole the land from and the black people you enslaved are one and the same, and Jim Crow didn't end until after the Soviet Union fell/Transformers aired, and you're on a continent that the West has a pathological inclination to exploit.

The righteous fury of those denied the dignity of land and agency burns a cultural brand into the skin of the body politic, an endemic disregard for the "rules-based order" that orders them to the back of the line (however it's said and whoever has the megaphone). The people who benefit, only willing to provide an an ounce of the pound of cure necessary, mask-and-hazmat-suit-up to weather the plague they wrought. It looks ridiculous because it is.

https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2014/5/13/oscar-pistorius...

For sure. Also I’m a fan of a concrete covered bunker/entryway so that you can’t be shot at by someone inside the property when security visits you.

This sounds like Brazil. Also a lot of innovation in crime here

> to an American eye, barbed wire on top of a wall codes as "this neighborhood is unsafe". To a South African it codes as "this home is protected and safe" -- very different reactions

If the neighborhood is safe, the barbed wire would be unnecessary to make the home protected and safe. Not really sure why the distinction is necessary. In your South African's take, what happens when you leave the protected and safe property. To me that means you are stepping into an unsafe neighborhood.

You’ve definitely never lived in SA with that comment. Everywhere in the world security is just a feeling, but SA explores just how far feelings can be from reality quite often.

Everywhere in the world, security is a collective effort and a product of mutual trust. SA happens when a minority refuses to exchange disproportionate power for trust. Israel is another example.

In Australia I mostly see razor wire as "this is infrastructure". Ports, substations, machinery yards, dams, smelters, oil refineries, the back of police stations, hospitals, and that sort of thing.

Barbed wire isn't widely used for security anymore, so it's mostly just on farms, and around here it's usually supplemented by an electric fence. In fact, half our fences at home were just a single length of barbed wire at the top with regular fencing wire for everything else.

In my experience around Cape Town, it's both: High security (or more commonly electric fencing in affluent neighbourhoods) on a single house means the house is safe (or the owners are paranoid). High security on every house in the neighborhood means high crime rate in the neighborhood.

It also don't think crime stats went up much over the last decades in general (may be different in specific neighborhoods), but there is definitely more fear of safety that leads to more security.

I agree that the perception, (and implied acknowledgment) of violence is a very interesting factor — and I would not be surprised if the very act of building a lot of visible security features near a building overall increases the rate of some sorts of crime.

That said, you’re a little out of date on SA - violent crime across the country was relatively stable for a decade or two, but since 2021, violent crimes across SA have spiked, and now even Cape Town is in the 20 most dangerous towns in the world, and in the top 10 murder / capita towns in the world.

Murder rates are now around half of what it was 30 years ago, while at the same time security around homes went up significantly (and most new developments are security estates). The increase in murder rate over the last 3 years is not significant on that scale.

Yeah, to me the headline is just completely wrong and misleading.

None of this has anything to do with semiotics. I was expecting the exact same thing as you -- semiotics would be about what does seeing barbed wire in specific spaces/contexts mean to different groups of people?

What are its associations with prisons, compounds, neighborhoods, safety, security, the state, private security, militarization, crime, farming, cattle, trespassing, the American West, freedom to roam, and so forth? When you see barbed wire, does it make you feel safe or nervous or scared? How does that change if it's in a residential neighborhood vs. around a military base?

Your experience in South Africa is a perfect example -- thanks for sharing.

I think you’re reading a bit too much into this. Reasons for barbed or not vary. (or broken bottles laid in concrete on top of a wall, which is something else you’ll see in SA) I don’t think houses necessarily refuse barbed wire. They just have other security controls.

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