Access Denied: Ruminations on Gates, Status, and the Global Belonging Game

Aweh, My Dearly Beloved Fellow Ruminants & Groupies,

Let me level with you. I’m writing this from inside a paradox—privileged enough to live in a secure suburb with high walls and patrolled by armed guards. Sometimes I’m even able to skip a queue or two when it suits me.

But also: extensively vetted for visas. Scrutinised by embassies. Treated with suspicion at border control. Always on the outside looking in when it comes to the Global North’s gatekeeping machine.

That’s the truth of the Global South experience for the privileged: we build fences around ourselves, but we’re fenced out of the world.

🏢 The Lift That Doesn’t Stop for You

Start small: the office. Not yours, the one above you. The floor you’ll never see unless you’re called in to “present” something. The one with the fruit-infused water, the Zen sky gardens, and the rule that your card won’t work in the lift past Level 9.

That executive elevator? It’s not just about convenience. It’s about hierarchy, power, and saying “You belong here” and “You don’t.” The executives don’t just want privacy—they want distance, peace, and insulation from the noise and mediocrity below.

When you finally get a taste of it—maybe by accident or luck—you realise how good it feels. That’s the hook. The lie. The comfort of exclusion.

🏘️ Fortress South Africa: Our Walls Are Getting Higher

We do it to ourselves too. Boom gates, the private security apps, the WhatsApp groups that alert us to any threats. The armed guards patrolling our suburbs with immediate armed response. Gated communities for the privileged are now the norm across Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

We say it’s about crime, and often it is. But it’s also about fear. About controlling who gets to come close. About making poverty invisible. About keeping your “world” intact while the actual world becomes harder to live in.

I like the sense of order, the fake calm. I’m not here to lie. But it’s not just about crime—it’s about shutting out the beggars at the gate, the raw poverty, the feral chaos that gnaws at the edges of our suburbs. Gangsterism and violence aren’t abstract fears—they’re just a few kilometres away, close enough to feel, but far enough to ignore.

🛂 Global North: The World’s Velvet Rope

Now try travelling. Try applying for a visa with a Global South passport in the rich world. You’re not a tourist. You’re a potential threat. A risk. An overstayer. They ask how much money you make, what ties you have to your country, and what “guarantee” you’ll return home as soon as possible.

Before you even get to the border, you’re buried under an avalanche of paperwork, bank statements, letters of invitation, and epic bureaucracy designed less to assess you than to wear you down.

You’re more welcome in places like Turkey, Brazil, or Thailand—countries that remember how to host without pretending it’s a favour.

🧨Xenophobia: Coming from Inside the House

Now here’s the part that stings. While we’re locked out, we’re also doing our own gatekeeping at home. We are not innocent. In South Africa, in Nigeria, in India, in Chile—xenophobia is on the rise. Neighbours turning on neighbours. “Foreigners” blamed for crime, unemployment, and overpopulation.

Politicians feed the fire. The media amplifies it. And regular people believe it.

We build fences to keep ourselves “safe” from outsiders who look a little too much like us. Who talk with a different accent. Who are just trying to survive.

Good luck if you’re a foreigner trying to get a work permit. South Africa’s Home Affairs is a bureaucratic labyrinth where logic goes to die. Permits get stuck for months—or years—in opaque processing queues, lost in a shuffle of missing documents, contradictory instructions, and policy mood swings. Corruption seeps in at the edges, where ‘expediting’ an application often depends less on merit and more on how much you are prepared to pay. Even skilled professionals who want to contribute are met with a closed door and a cold shrug.

And it’s disgusting. It’s tragic. And it’s very familiar. Because we’re doing to others what’s being done to us on a global scale.

🔍 The Ugly Mirror

Here’s what access control really is: a mirror. It shows us who we trust. Who we fear. Who we think deserves dignity—and who we quietly believe does not.

When we’re on the inside, we wrap it in merit. “I worked hard.” “I followed the rules.” “I earned this.” But when we’re outside looking in, it’s gatekeeping. It’s injustice. It’s a system rigged against us.

And here’s the uncomfortable truth: both can be true. And that double vision makes us complicit.

Because I’ve benefited. I’ve stood behind the boom gate and felt reassured. I’ve walked past the queue and felt smug.

And I’ve also been screened. Delayed. Questioned. Flagged. I know what it feels like to hold your breath at immigration, hoping your life story makes sense to a tired officer with too much power and too little time.

Access isn’t neutral. It tells you who matters. Who belongs and what your position in the dominance hierarchy is.

And while I’ll still use the lounge (let’s not lie), I’ll also keep justifying it—telling myself I’ve earned it, that it’s harmless, and that comfort doesn’t always have to mean complicity.
But somewhere between the free champagne and the velvet rope, there’s a gnawing doubt: am I just another gatekeeper with cognitive dissonance?

Thanks for all the comments and input.

Bruce