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In 1998 my office in St. Louis was closing and consolidating with the one in Kansas City. I was open to follow my job, and was also offered several job opportunities in various locations with the company. One of those was a 2-3 year assignment in South Africa. The area I would have been in was between Pretoria and Johannesburg.

I was very interested as it would mean basically an immediate double promotion as well as a VERY large increase salary and perks. The company would have provided me and my family a car and driver, and the driver was a armed body guard. I would have been provided a very nice home in a gated and guarded golf course community with lots of other amenities. However, I wanted to make sure it was the right thing for my family before I accepted the position and locked in for that commitment, so started in-depth research of the country and what to expect.

It was just a few year post-Apartheid and it was very violent with tribal toyi-toyi's (violent political protests) still happening. There were also lots of muggings, robberies, rapes and murders and you would hear about them occurring close to you not daily, but hourly.

We talked to a friend who was there with her husband and family of two teen-aged children. The night before we talked they were eating dinner in a mall and someone was shot at the ATM right below them on the first floor. There had also been a string of armored car robberies over the previous year or so (233 in the first 9 months of 1997) by former soldiers from Umkhonto we Sizwe. These robbers would shoot peoples vehicles on the highway to disable them and block in the armored cars on the roads. Then they would come in and shoot-up the armored car killing the guards and make off with the money. Here is an article about that http://articles.latimes.com/1998/feb/07/news/mn-16411

In one of the robberies, one of our expatriate employees had their vehicle shot and it disabled the engine. Luckily the driver was sharp, realized what was happening and quickly moved the car out of the road as it coasted to a stop and the armored vehicle went on past them a ways before getting stopped and robbed.

Another event happened in the gated community where the VP I would have been working for lived. They were still building houses in the neighborhood and the workers had to check in and out at the guard post. In the mornings, they would count the number coming in in the vehicle. In the evening, they would count the number you had going out and search the vehicle. Since they weren't as diligent with their searches in the morning, there would be 2-3 people hiding in the van on the way in. In the evening, they would stay behind and wait until dark to steal and rob. A house across the street from my VP housed a family from Great Britain. The robbers thought the house was vacant, went in and the family was there. When confronted, the robbers killed the Father, Mother and 2 young children. :-(

After my research, I decided it was not the place my wife and I wanted to raise our 5 year old daughter, If she had been older to be more wary of her surroundings, or younger where she would not have been going off to school daily, we might have gone. But they are pretty vulnerable at that age. I chose an assignment in Dallas instead.