Now we are free to live here, to move around."He admits the crime rate is appalling But his sympathy for whites has limits. "They are simply getting a taste of what township people have suffered for decades." Anyway, he does not believe South African blacks are responsible for the lawlessness "It is the Nigerians," he insists "They have flooded in with their drugs and their crime.". That simply entrenches what was there before, without the laws of apartheid."Samuel, a mini cab driver, like the majority of blacks, has nothing against whites returning to town But for the moment he revels in its blackness. For decades his people were cleared from town and corralled into "kaffir locations" "It's much much better now," he beams "Before the police would stop you and ask for your pass If you did not have one they would throw you into jail.

"If Johannesburg city centre becomes 100 per cent black and Sandton 85 per cent white that will be a terrible indictment of the rainbow nation. If it had been designed as an African city it would have had open spaces, toilets and storage for traders."He warns that whites cannot remain in high security isolation for ever and deplores the corporate trend of building restaurants and shops within city centre buildings so that whites and a few blacks can live in fortified towers "while mayhem reigns below".Crime is real but whites must take a stake in the city centre's future, he says. Whites gravitated north to nestle in the bosom of middle class, racial homogeneity. "It is part of the general phenomenon which says 'look at Africa and run like hell' and creates the Sandton Syndrome, which leaves people sitting behind high walls reaching for their panic buttons."Mr Fraser prefers not to meet whites head on. Making the city clean, crime free and full of attractions he believes will eventually bring them back to a town representative of the national population for the first time in its 100-year history."White South Africans get annoyed with me for saying this," says Fraser, "but part of Johannesburg's problem is that it was designed as an apartheid, colonial city rather than an African city. To suggest to whites they have fled from anything other than crime is also delicate, he says.