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"Everyone's all right," she said at once, as she always does (code for no one has died) "but Ben and Annie have had a horrific experience." I braced myself for a tale of burglary, perhaps even mugging, since my brother Ben and his wife, Annie, live in high-crime Johannesburg -- a place where, at parties, hosts hire security guards to walk guests to their cars; a place where drivers run red lights for fear of carjacking; a place where gangs rob bank trucks by blowing them to bits with AK-47s and then looting the wrecks.

But as I listened, with a creeping sense of dread, I realized that something far worse had happened. Not only to Ben and Annie, which it certainly had, but also, in a minor key, to me. To me and my stubborn complacency about South Africa after apartheid -- the "new South Africa," as it's called there, always in quotes.

Here's the short version, which is what I heard from my mother that morning, over a year ago (details came slowly, over the next few days). Ben, who's 37, had come home from work that night after midnight. He works in arts management, so late nights at performances or events are part of his job. Annie, his 29-year-old wife (or bride, as I still thought of her, since the last time I'd seen them was at their wedding that March) was asleep at home, a modest townhouse in a gated suburban complex, typical for young, professional, but not particularly affluent white South Africans. As usual, Ben drove his car through the electronic gate and parked in the lot. He was walking the few hundred yards down the path to his door when somebody emerged from the darkness behind him and thrust a gun to his head.

Although Ben immediately offered up his wallet and car keys, three young men with guns forced their way into the house, proceeded to rape Annie (in Ben's presence, à la Clockwork Orange), pistol-whip both of them, tie them up, gag them and torture them intermittently for the next five hours. During those hours, having bundled Ben and Annie into duvets so they couldn't see, breathe or move, the intruders robbed and trashed the place at their leisure, pausing only to cook themselves a meal and drink all the liquor in the house.

Quite a party they threw themselves, apparently, interrupting it now and then to threaten Ben and Annie with death if they so much as coughed (which, given that they had towels stuffed into their mouths, was hard to avoid). At some point in this very long night, the men left, loading Ben's car with everything they could lift, but Ben and Annie, not knowing if their assailants would return, or if all of them had indeed left, waited until they heard birdsong before daring to move.

A horrific experience by anyone's standards. But hardly uncommon in Johannesburg, which now has one of the highest rates of violent crime in the world. The murder rate there is about nine times that of the United States. A rape occurs every 10 minutes in South Africa today, and a violent housebreaking is so common that it doesn't even make the papers and is only perfunctorily investigated by the police, who, outnumbered, overworked, undertrained and often corrupt, hold out no hope of solving it (or the thousands like it). The only noteworthy aspect of this case, apparently, is that my brother and sister-in-law weren't killed.

Something else worth noting: As my mother narrated these events, she didn't -- as far as I can recall -- specify the race of the three young men. She didn't need to. I took it for granted, correctly, that they were black. The overwhelming majority of violent crimes in South Africa, against people of all races, are committed by black offenders. Blacks are, of course, the majority in South Africa, but their involvement in violent crime is still vastly disproportionate to their numbers.

Random violence, rape, robbery can erupt into anyone's life, no matter where you live or who you are -- we know this only too well in the United States. But this incident, this South African statistic, struck me with a peculiarly bitter poignancy. Not only because family members were involved, though obviously for that reason. Not only because of the unfairness of it -- my brother worked for the racially integrated Market Theatre in the 1980s and returned to Johannesburg from London in 1991 to become part of the "new South Africa" -- because violence is always unfair. (And class privilege is still class privilege, however clean its conscience and its hands.)

No, what I experienced was a different, more complicated kind of confusion. As I listened, in the October pre-dawn, to my mother recounting these events, I thought I could detect in her voice not only shock, not only pain, not only disbelief, but a shrill note of vindication. My mother is a native-born South African, profoundly, reflexively, candidly racist. For as long as I can remember, she has been telling us, her children, that "they" are out to get us, that "they" will break into our houses, "they" will beat us, rob us, rape us.

And now "they" have.

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