Ever since 1986, when Anglo American Properties introduced Fourway Gardens, the country's first security suburb, walls have become a talking point in our culture.

And as far back as 1989 the writer Ivan Vladislavic was commenting on the strange heights charted by South African walls. In his short story Journal of Wall, he offered this odd statement: "The wall looked ashamed of itself."

As the 1990s gained momentum the peculiarity of his observation became, well, less strange. Partly this was because an obscure left-field interest had become a collective mainstream obsession. Everyone was talking walls.

Inevitably this "wall speak" has resulted in a curious new vocabulary.

"Brazilianisation" describes how wealthy South Americans have dealt with their fear of crime: they built walls.

Other buzzwords of wall speak include: "fortified enclaves", "privatopia" and, most recently, "semi-gration". Hold onto that last one, you'll hear more of it in future.

Richard Ballard introduced the word to South Africans earlier this week at an international symposium on gated communities at Pretoria's Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR).

If nothing else the choice of venue was certainly rich with irony. I grew up a short ramble from this gated, walled industrial park, which since the 1970s has tried to pretend it is a nature reserve.

Ballard, a member of the Development Studies School at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, observed that gated communities represent a strategy by whites for finding comfort zones in post-apartheid South Africa, to loosely quote from a Sapa report.

More simply stated, if emigration denotes finding comfort in Perth, semi-gration means finding the same in Dainfern.

Speaking of Dainfern, it is strange to see how leftist critical theory and reality awkwardly collide at this well-known gated suburb north of Johannesburg.

In a 2001 study published by the London School of Economics and Political Science, Charlotte Spinks described this country's fortified suburbs as examples of a "new apartheid".

I wonder how Mzekezeke would respond?

In case you've never heard of the masked pop star, Mzekezeke is to SA youth what the balaclava-clad Subcomandante Marcos is to the Zapatista rebels in Chiapas, Mexico: a rousing cause.

According to pop mythology, Mzekezeke comes from Mnonjaneng section in Thembisa on the East Rand. Last year it was reported that Mzekezeke is actually Yfm's DJ S'bu Leopeng and a resident of Dainfern.

While Mzekezeke might be exceptional in terms of the status he has achieved, he has actualised a dream common to more than just a privileged few white semi-exiles.

According to the Trafalgar Inner City Report 2004, released in October last year, the typical inner-city tenant is young, black, male and single. He has lived there for around 18 months.

Eventually he would like to move to Sandton, where they have walls too.

Business Times