THE National Hijack Prevention Academy is one of several schools in South Africa offering “hijack prevention and survival courses”.

It has more than 5,000 customers a year for its three-hour, £14 coaching.

“Most of the course deals with how to prevent being hijacked,” says Richard Brussow, the former police officer who runs the Pretoria-based scheme. “But it also teaches what to do in the event things go horribly wrong and you find yourself with a piece of cold steel being pointed at your head.”

Motorists are told that carjackers belong invariably to sophisticated gangs with contacts in the police, the border patrol and even the national phone company.

Carjackings are carried out with lightning precision. Photographs will have been taken of your house, vehicle and security systems. Your movements will have been observed for days. The assailants will have maps, phones, back-up vehicles and sometimes will wear police uniforms.

Seventy per cent of hijackings take place in driveways and between 6.30pm and 7.30pm, when the police are changing shifts. Motorists are told to turn off their radios and to drive past their homes before stopping, to check the surroundings. Are you being followed? Who are those people in the street?

If carjacked, the advice is simple: “Your life is worth more than your car.” Give the hijacker what he wants, as quickly and smoothly as possible. If there are children in the vehicle, offer a trade: “The keys for the kids.” The hijacker is likely to accept.

If you are a woman and the hijacker demands you go with him, you adamantly refuse. “You make him choose, there and then, whether to release or kill you,” Mr Brussow said. “If you go with him you will almost certainly die a horrible death.”

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