Philippa Garson
More people are employed in the security industry than there are policemen, and peace monitors have asked Safety and Security Minister Sydney Mufamadi to investigate links between private security companies and crime.
The flourishing security industry is wide open to political or criminal abuse and must be investigated and regulated as a matter of urgency.
This is the finding of lengthy research conducted by the Network of Independent Monitors, which has appealed to the Ministry of Safety and Security to hold an inquiry into the industry and find “new ways and means of regulating the industry to prevent abuse, corruption and security company involvement in political violence”.
The report, compiled by researcher Sara Blecher, documents numerous allegations of private security company involvement in political and criminal violence in KwaZulu- Natal and Gauteng and calls for new legislation to govern the industry.
“There are currently more people employed in the security industry than there are policemen. Security personnel have far less training than policemen, and there is little regulation of their activities, yet they are often performing the same functions as the police.”
The report argues that private security companies moved in to take over the policing functions of an over-stretched police force which concentrated on political repression. Against a background of escalating crime, they continue to flourish — often committing abuses — in the absence of effective regulation.
While the security forces have been revamped and subjected to close scrutiny, the same has not happened in the private security industry, which operates with few controls.
Security companies provided a natural home for disgruntled police officers and elite operatives from the former security forces.
It is a highly competitive industry which operates in the interests of its clients rather than the public and accumulates profit from conflict.
She cites growing “evidence … to suggest private security companies have had an established role in fomenting political violence … and many of the networks established by the apartheid government in order to preserve itself are still intact and available for hire to any party whose interests it would serve to destabilise a new democracy”.
Evidence of security company involvement in violence in the early 1990s emerged in the 1994 Goldstone Commission Report and continues to emerge. According to Blecher, there is evidence that at least three of the Caprivi trainees (hit-squads, trained by the former defence force, which conducted the KwaMakhutha massacre, the details of which are being heard in the Malan trial) are employed in the private security industry.
Two Inkatha Freedom Party-aligned Durban mayors, Sipho Ngwenya and Johannes Mile, are both listed as directors of a private security company.
According to deputy intelligence co-ordinator Moe Shaik, the names of several security companies in KwaZulu-Natal have cropped up in National Intelligence Agency investigations into violence in that province.
The report documents well-known evidence of security companies having existed as front companies for the security forces and calls for the forces to “make a full public account of all security companies that were set up as fronts and investigate whether any links remain”.
As it is currently interpreted, the Security Officers Act of 1987 does not apply to former homelands. It provides for the Security Officers Board, comprising three representatives of employers, three of employees, two appointed by the Safety and Security Ministry and two from consumer bodies, to regulate the industry.
Blecher argues that the board, headed by Springbok Patrols owner Abraham Bartmann, is not sufficiently independent to scrutinise and police the industry.
While all security companies and guards are required to register with the board, this does not apply to “in-house” security personnel. While 21 discplinary charges have been brought against companies or individuals in the past year, no company has been deregistered “pursuant to such a charge, which is suprising, given the extent of abuse within the industry”.
The South African Police Service issues gun licenses to individual companies. “A common practice among companies when they are unable to get more licences issued is to buy a company which already has these licenses and then switch the licenses to the original company. This practice, which allows any company to have as many guns as it can afford without proper regulation, is open to abuse,” says Blecher.