South Africa's private security industry, with 637 675 active officers, dwarfs police and creates a gateway for organised crime.
Picture: iStock
South Africa’s booming private security industry is creating a potentially lucrative gateway for organised crime, offering criminal networks a legitimate-looking business front.
Private security companies can provide access to firearms, trained personnel, surveillance infrastructure, intelligence and proximity to businesses, communities and state institutions.
According to experts, the scale of the industry makes the potential threat significant.
Private security industry scale poses potential threat – experts
By 31 March, 2025, the Private Security Industry Regulatory Authority (Psira) had registered 22 015 security companies, of which 17 146 were classified as active – with about 637 675 active security officers. This dwarfs the over 180 000 uniformed and civilian employees of the SA Police Service (Saps).
Private security companies are routinely hired by the state to guard public infrastructure, hospitals, schools and government buildings.
For criminologist Prof Kholofelo Rakubu, the key concern is not simply whether criminals enter the security industry, but whether legitimate security structures can be part of organised crime.
She said security companies operate in an environment which is attractive to criminal networks.
They provide protection, access control, surveillance, transportation and information, while their employees routinely work in restricted environments and around sensitive sites.
The attraction, she said, is not the company itself but the operational capacity it can provide.
Guns and surveillance infrastructure attractive to organised crime
Rakubu said the sector was attractive to organised crime because security companies operate within spaces that criminals themselves value.
She said their employees may carry firearms where appropriately licensed, guard strategic sites, respond to incidents, conduct surveillance and develop relationships with police, businesses and communities.
She said this combination of authority, information and access could become valuable to organised crime networks.
“A registered security company can provide a lawful corporate identity behind which unlawful activities may potentially be concealed,” Rakubu said.
She said a security company captured or infiltrated by criminal interests could provide cover for activities ranging from money laundering and extortion to intimidation and violence.
According to Rakubu, one of the biggest regulatory challenges was distinguishing formal ownership from actual control.
Warning signs
She said potential warning signs included unexplained ownership changes, directors exercising little genuine control, unexplained wealth, unusual financial transactions, repeated corporate restructuring, links to organised crime figures, irregular firearm records and employees associated with violent offences.
Psira already requires directors, partners, trustees and managers of security businesses to be registered security service providers, while individual registration includes requirements and restrictions relating to specified previous convictions.
But Rakubu argued effective regulation needs to go further.
Risk-based vetting, she said, should examine beneficial ownership, legally permissible criminal intelligence, previous business associations, financial red flags, regulatory history, links between directors across companies, firearm compliance, tax compliance and previous tender conduct.
Vetting should not end when a company receives its registration certificate, with Rakubu pointing out that a person who appears low-risk when a company enters the industry may develop criminal associations years later.
She said the most serious regulatory failure would not necessarily be that a criminal manages to deceive the regulator because no regulatory system can guarantee that criminal infiltration will never occur.
SIU probes maladministration, procurement failures in Psira
“Organised crime exploits exactly this difference between formal compliance and substantive legitimacy,” said Rakubu.
She said this was significant given that the Special Investigating Unit is probing allegations of maladministration and procurement failures within Psira.
Rakubu said firearms provide the clearest illustration of the regulatory challenge.
Psira’s 2024-25 annual report recorded 1 630 instances during inspections involving businesses using firearms that were not compliant with specified firearm-related regulatory requirements.
She said while the figure did not mean that 1 630 firearms were stolen or diverted, it does, however, demonstrate the scale of firearm-compliance challenges confronting the regulator.
Rakubu said the sheer size of the industry presents another problem, saying Psira cannot realistically rely predominantly on registration and periodic inspections to identify sophisticated criminal networks.
Criminality has no place in industry – Sasa
She said that would require meaningful information sharing between Psira, Saps, the Central Firearms Registry, Companies and Intellectual Property Commission, South African Revenue Service, the Financial Intelligence Centre as well as government procurement structures.
Security Association of South Africa (Sasa) national administrator Tony Botes said criminality has no place in the industry.
“The private security industry was created many decades ago to fight crime and not to commit crime,” Botes said.
He suggested Saps and courts should notify Psira when directors, managers or security officers were convicted of Schedule 1 offences – crimes that grant police officers the power to arrest without a warrant – allowing their registration status to be reassessed.
He said Sasa was a major contributor of non-compliance information to Psira and other regulatory bodies.
According to Botes, such cases did not usually involve blatant criminal contraventions, but warned companies abusing their security officers could potentially be involved in other “nefarious deeds”.E
