Private armed security officers take position during a joint operation with undercover and uniformed South Africa Police Service (SAPS) members in Jeppestown, Johannesburg, on July 12, 2021 during clashes with residents of the Wolhuter Men's Hostel. - President Cyril Ramaphosa on July 12 said the deadly unrest gripping the country is unprecedented in post-apartheid South Africa as he deployed troops to help police crush the violence and looting sparked by the jailing of ex-president Jacob Zuma. (Photo by MARCO LONGARI / AFP)
Private security companies mainly in Gauteng have been the eyes and ears for the police and first responders in at least 117 incidents of public violence and looting in the past few days.
Helicopters from at least six of these companies provided information to the police in Gauteng on emerging hotspots, said Waal de Waal, chief operating officer of Bidvest Proteacoin.
At the heart of this is the Eyes and Ears (E2) initiative launched by Business Against Crime with the police where the security companies and the police control rooms are in contact with one another on the same radio frequency.
“When incidents … can escalate within minutes, time is of essential importance. The biggest problem was the number of reports doing the rounds of incidents, which turned out to be of a minor nature, while other bigger incidents were taking place,” said De Waal.
“By having helicopters and security guards on the ground to assess situations, we could direct the police to priority areas rather than to waste manpower in minor incidents.
“The private security industry and police alike literally battled together regardless of who works for whom. In some instances, it is literally like a war zone where the boots on the ground are your first line of defence, and the system has proven itself operationally beyond everybody’s expectations.”
Looting, stoning and stealing by mobs continued on Tuesday morning as the police and the defence force tried to contain the situation.
Police Minister Bheki Cele, flanked by ministers of the justice, crime prevention and security cluster, said 757 people have been arrested — 304 in KwaZulu-Natal and 453 in Gauteng — and that four police officers have been injured but are recovering.
At least 45 people have died; 26 in KwaZulu-Natal and 19 in Gauteng, said the premiers of the two provinces.
Ayanda Dlodlo, the minister of state security, said her department is investigating allegations of former members of her department being involved in instigating some of the violence.
The defence force has deployed four companies of soldiers, 400 troops to Gauteng and another 400 to KwaZulu-Natal, to support the police. Soldiers were seen patrolling the streets in Diepkloof, where much of Monday night’s unrest took place.
According to Fouché Burger, national programme manager of the E2 Initiative, the system has not only proved to be as much of an asset to the police as it is for the retail industry, because it prevented further damage to assets such as the cash-in-transit trucks. The trucks stopped collecting or delivering money from Monday midday as attacks on the vehicles were feared.
“Apart from curbing the violence, private security could also summon ambulances where people were hurt or killed in some of the incidents. The police emergency reporting number (10111) was flooded with calls for help and, where possible, private security assisted in minor incidents purely because a patrol vehicle was moving close by,” Burger said.
A number of security guards were injured and in one instance a family member of a security guard was killed in the violence because their families had become targets, he said.
What complicated the containment of looting was that malls would be overrun and looted and looters would then return later to carry off more goods, according to David de Lima, the chief operating officer of 24/7 Security Services, which offers armed reaction and remote site monitoring.
De Lima, whose company’s operations are concentrated in the greater Johannesburg area where most of the mall incidents took place, says collective action by the private security industry and the police was the direction the industry will pursue in future – especially as the police were “totally overwhelmed” in the past few days.
“To be effective against crime is a joint effort involving as many eyes and ears as we can muster. We now have a system which has proven itself,” he said.
Paul Gerber, the chief operating officer of Monitor Net, said indications were that the incidents of theft and violence were, when compared to those on Monday, on the decrease — even though still rampant in Diepkloof and Alexandra.
Armed residents, community policing forums and private security had guarded shops during the night.
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