I recently ran a rather grueling race in Cape Town, a city ranked the world’s most stressful place to visit. By the end of my stay, I understood why.

Race morning brought cold Atlantic air. Table Mountain stood like a fortress. The scene was impossibly beautiful. Then the warnings began.

Julius Malema, the deranged leader of the openly Marxist Economic Freedom Fighters, has led crowds in chanting 'Kill the Boer,' the Afrikaans term for farmer.

“Stay where the crowds are after you finish,” an organizer told us.

A gray-haired runner, tying his never-before-worn Asics, gave me a knowing look, the kind that said "enjoy yourself, but stay alert." The gun fired. We surged forward. And Cape Town revealed itself in fragments.

The route hugged the ocean. Waves crashed against huge rocks. Sunlight rippled across the bay. Spectators shouted encouragement from spotless sidewalks. Cyclists zipped by in neon helmets. In Sea Point and Camps Bay, Cape Town looks effortlessly affluent: palm trees, clean promenades, and cafés filled with people sipping espressos. You could be forgiven for thinking the warnings were overstated. They weren’t. If anything, they were understated.

Razor wire on the Riviera

South Africa’s “Mother City” lives with staggering levels of violent crime. Armed robberies are frequent. Carjackings happen in broad daylight, averaging more than four an hour. Drivers slow at traffic lights but leave space ahead, ready to bolt. Doors lock automatically. Security companies advertise response times the way pizzerias advertise delivery. Sexual assault remains widespread, not just among women but also among children. In the Western Cape alone, nearly 2,000 sexual offenses against minors were recorded in a single quarter last year. The numbers are sobering; the anxiety is constant.

Security is everywhere. High walls ring homes like fortresses. Electric fencing hums overhead. Razor wire catches the light. The message needs no translation.

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Gang warfare

A few hours before I arrived in the so-called cultural capital, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced the deployment of soldiers to help fight criminal gangs, a clear sign that police can no longer contain the violence.

And violence is everywhere. Between April and September last year, an average of 63 people were murdered each day. In parts of the Western Cape, especially around Cape Town, gang warfare has become part of daily life. Children are caught in crossfire. Streets fall under the influence of savage syndicates. The gangs, armed with high-powered weapons and machetes, have grown bolder. Why wouldn’t they? Ramaphosa himself noted that soldiers aren’t trained for community policing. Their deployment now underscores the depth of the crisis.

In Gauteng province, illegal miners known as zama zamas run riot. Armed and operating in abandoned shafts, they have built criminal networks around illicit gold extraction. Residents describe intimidation, forced displacement, and operations typical of paramilitary units, not opportunistic gangs.

Existential threat

Ramaphosa has called violent crime “the most immediate threat to our democracy.” He’s right. It is. When criminal groups control territory, extract revenue, and outgun police, the problem is no longer confined to law enforcement. In truth, it becomes a contest over authority itself — an existential struggle South Africa knows all too well, a divided nation once again on edge.

These divisions didn’t appear overnight. Apartheid enforced separation with clinical precision. Its architects portrayed the system not as hatred but as “separate development,” claiming that divided populations couldn’t share power without conflict.

Whites were a small minority, and universal suffrage meant irreversible political defeat. Afrikaners carried the memory of previous conflicts, including the concentration camps in which thousands of their women and children died. They watched postcolonial upheaval unfold elsewhere in Africa and reasoned that without firm control, the country would descend into all-out anarchy.

Set aside outrage and judgment for a moment, and the logic reads as cautious, defensive realism. They believed strict separation would prevent barbarity, preserve a functioning economy, and protect a vulnerable minority from domination. In their minds, it was a matter of survival, not ideology. It’s easy to dismiss the apartheid movement as pure racism, a low-IQ explanation that fits neatly on a placard. But it overlooks the deeper dread that shaped it.

Farmers under siege

History didn’t end with apartheid’s fall. The country remains marked by mistrust, hatred, and absolute terror. Last year, President Trump suggested that white farmers were facing vicious reprisals. Violence against farmers is real and terrifying for those who live beyond the reach of towns and patrols. Farm attacks — home invasions, assaults, and killings — occur with regularity. Many farmers live far from towns or patrols, isolated and vulnerable when attackers strike.

Julius Malema, the deranged leader of the openly Marxist Economic Freedom Fighters, has led crowds in chanting “Kill the Boer,” the Afrikaans term for farmer. Thousands raise their hands like guns as they echo the refrain. Supporters describe it as a chant from the struggle era. Others, a little more grounded in reality, hear something far more dangerous. They hear language that calls for genocide. After all, what is being proposed is the elimination of people defined by a particular skin color. When I asked a white taxi driver whether such fears were exaggerated, he answered without hesitation: “No.”

At the crossroads ... again

South Africa is a beautiful country, arguably one of the most beautiful places on earth. Yet it can feel deeply intimidating, largely because it is. A tension hangs in the air, present even in the quietest moments. In many communities, it’s considered reckless not to keep multiple loaded firearms at home, ready to be used at any moment, day or night. Safety is discussed in near wartime terms. Even a simple trip to the store can feel like a roll of the dice, especially for white families.

Does South Africa have the capacity to weather the mounting unrest? I hope so, but I wouldn’t bet on it. A nation intimately familiar with bloodshed once again stands at a crossroads.