Who guards the guards? SA’s security industry faces major regulatory shake-up

There is a row brewing over another government intervention, one that touches many “privileged” South Africans on their studio – and deliberately so – following the Private Security Industry Regulatory Authority’s call for comments on its draft regulations.

The security industry is one of the biggest sectors in South Africa. There are more armed guards, many in armoured vehicles, than the police officers and the soldiers combined.

The draft regulations seek to radically control the issuing and use of firearms by security officers on duty, which has queued the expected highly vocal rebuttal from the industry and its agents warning of Gotterdammerung if these are passed.

In terms of the boogieman, it’s right up there with the National Health Insurance Bill, the Expropriation Act and the Basic Education Laws Amendment Act.

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Like all of these, this latest iteration is and it isn’t an assault on the rights enjoyed by those in the leafy suburbs.

South Africa is truly one of the few places on the globe where two opposing views can be true at the same time – and often are.

It’s not normal to have so many people in uniform and armed and not under the command of a sovereign defence force or police service.

It is only fitting then that their privilege of bearing arms as a tool of work should be subject to regulations.

But, equally, it’s not normal to have a police service, with a few notable exceptions, as wholly dysfunctional as ours, ostensibly protecting us from criminals who are brazen and heavily armed – some of whom may be running their own security companies, too.

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Also typical to the South African context is that what looks perfectly reasonable on paper is invariably a confused mess that is ill-understood, ill-applied, unfair and ripe for backhanders.

If security guards are to be held to these standards, then surely police officers should be, too – especially since stolen police weapons are a significant arsenal for criminals?

No-one is debating the macro issue, instead there’s a lot of scaremongering all designed to defending ground already held and there’s no resolution in that.

For the past two millennia, academics and jurists have been wrestling over Juvenal’s muse: “Who will guard the guards themselves” as a way of monitoring the actions of those who monitor us.

In typical South African fashion, that’s not a figure of speech, it’s literally become the question.

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