One of the reasons I chose to escape to Cape Town for the weekend was to distance myself from the pervasive violent crime in Johannesburg and Pretoria. I had been told to visit Cape Town, the most beautiful city in South Africa.

My taxi driver from the Cape Town airport told me how he had just gotten out of a 13-month stay in the hospital because 4 passengers tried to kill him as part of a gang initiation. We then pulled up to my hotel, where police had cordoned off the area because a robber had taken a bank employee hostage right around the corner. While driving down to Cape Point (the southernmost point of the Cape of Good Hope), the guy sitting beside me on the bus (another American) told me how he had just been a victim of an attempted mugging right before he got on the bus.

So much for safety.