Heritage Park, outside Cape Town, is thought to be the first self-contained town entirely ringed by a computer-monitored fence that zaps intruders with 35,000 volts and alerts a corps of security guards.

The cluster of 650 houses, two churches, two schools and several factories is slightly bigger than Monaco. Of 1,500 residents, 1,495 are white. Its pastel-coloured two-storey homes are in severe contrast with what lies beyond the fence: tin shacks and low-cost government-built houses, home of tens of thousands of poor black people and “coloureds.”

For George Hazelden 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.”

Mr Hazelden also built a small 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.”

In some ways Mr 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.

Via del.icio.us The Guardian + Mail & Guardian + news24.