Many properties in crime-ridden South Africa are secured by electronic burglar alarms and high concrete walls topped with high-voltage electric fences, but in the quaint small diamond mining town of Cullinan, coffins are the latest security gadgets.
Following a spate of robberies in the semi-rural town of around 28,000 people, some residents have found that caskets are keeping burglars at bay.
Tired of the break-ins, a couple that runs a scrap metal trading firm thought they would experiment with a coffin to deter thieves.
From three burglaries a week, they have registered zero since they erected a black coffin among rusting pieces of iron piping strewn around the open-air hectare surrounded with a wire mesh perimeter fencing.
