Christmas Crime

Madness, absolute madness! If you are South African then you probably know someone or you yourself have been a victim of crime. More specifically VIOLENT crime. I understand that crime is unavoidable no matter where in the world you live, but the thing that gets to me is the "violent" aspect of it. In S.A they not only break in to your house but the terrorise you before leaving too. I'm angry no I'm livid.....my family and I have been living in the same house for just over 4 years now. The area is good and crime is relatively low in comparison to our neighbouring suburbs, but all that changed last week when the family 2 houses from me found themselves tied up and all their possessions where being loaded up into their own car by the thieves. One week later the same thing happened to another family in our street and have I mentioned that at least 6 dogs have been poisoned in our street in the last month. To add insult to injury these Christmas criminals don't even wait for the cover of darkness to strike. Both incidents happened in broad day light and the owners of the homes weren't even out. I think I have some understanding of crime in fact I would go as far as to say that I might not even be all that unsettled if I came home one day and found that all my belongings had been stolen, what does unsettle me is the blatant nature of the crimes. Criminals in S.A are so unthreatend by our police force that they hold people hostage while they rob you. The first family that I mentioned was even able to give clear descriptions of what the burglars looked like. All of this drama has sent my husband into a panic. As the father of 2 small daughters he immediately sprang into protection mode and last nite presented me with 2 options. 1- Use his qualifications and heritage and move to Ireland or 2- move out of the home that for the last 4 years I have spent lots of time and money on, into a much smaller much more expensive house that is set in a security estate. I love my home, I love that I was pregnant in it and that our kids took there first steps in it. I love the big tree that's in our front garden and I love that my dogs have a big back yard to play in. When I first saw the house it was like falling in love, I knew with in 30 seconds after walking through the front door that I had found the house that would be a home to me and my family........but now it is on the market for much less than it is worth due to the fact that we want a quick sale and our future home isn't even built yet. Now I know that you're reading this and saying why not just beef up security but short of putting an MI5 agent outside our front door we've pretty much covered all our basis. We have electric fencing on top of our 6 foot wall, CCTV cameras an alarm system, trellidoor burglar bars and 2 German Sheppard's. All of which the last person to get held up in their own house had. I don't want to live like a prisoner fenced off from the rest of the world and afraid to let my kids play outside. Moving to this new estate will allow us more freedoms but it will also drastically raise our cost of living. However I might actually be able to sleep at nite without getting paranoid about a noise I just heard outside. My question is this, when did things get so bad that even if your house looked like fort Knox you'd still probably be the victim of a house break in and why should I have to move away to another country or pay thousands extra a month to stay in a security estate to ensure my survival. There is something very wrong here and we need to kick our police force under their asses, because if they just did their job I'm sure criminals would think twice before breaking the law. But as we all know South Africa is the land of crime with out punishment.