Private security sector under scrutiny after DJ Warras assassination

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JEREMY MAGGS: Reconciliation Day has delivered another brutal reminder of how bold South Africa’s criminal underworld has become.

The daylight killing of well-known broadcaster DJ Warras [Warrick Stock] in Johannesburg comes just days before the burial of Marius van der Merwe, known as Witness D in the Madlanga Commission.

It’s a case that has raised serious concerns about witness intimidation and organised crime, and I would suggest these are not just random acts. It seems they point to a sophisticated, well-resourced criminal ecosystem now operating more openly and with apparent renewed confidence.

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I want to discuss what this means for public safety, the state of the private security industry in South Africa as well. Is there a link there? And I can think of no better person to talk to than Chad Thomas, organised crime investigator at IRS Forensic Investigations.

Chad, a very warm welcome to you. Let’s start with the broad canvas, if we can. I mentioned in the introduction these are not random acts. What’s happening here? What does all of this point to? What’s your assessment?

CHAD THOMAS: I’m still in a bit of shock with the news coming out of the assassination of Warras yesterday. He was not just a well-known media personality, but he had also moved into the security space, the space we see a lot of people moving into, a lot of people who I think have the right intentions, but also a lot of questionable people moving into this space.

We’ve seen over the years that taxi bosses have bought up security companies through proxies so that they can fight literally turf wars using each other’s security companies.

That gives access to legitimate weapons.

We’ve seen these same taxi owners hire out their staff as izinkabi [hitmen]. These vehicles aren’t stopped on the road, because they are registered to security companies. They’re branded, they’re marked, people aren’t questioned for carrying large calibre firearms and rifles.

Read: No one seems willing to take on taxi industry’s anti-competitive behaviour

We’ve noted with concern over a few years that a lot of bad actors have infiltrated the industry under the pretext of so-called VIP protection, whereas in actual fact, it’s to have one’s own personal militia to settle business disputes.

It’s far easier to settle a business dispute these days with bullets or extortion or threats than going through the protracted civil process.

JEREMY MAGGS: Do you think, then, Chad, that South Africa’s private security sector is properly managed, controlled and vetted? Or do you think it’s becoming increasingly and more dangerously porous?

CHAD THOMAS: It’s a very interesting question that. The very first legislation around security in South Africa came about in 1987, when the Security Officers Board Act was established. That had stayed in place until 2001 and was replaced by the Private Security Industry Regulation Act, which established an organisation called Psira, which is the Private Security Industry Regulatory Authority.

They’re the statutory body, they’re the custodian of the Act, and one of the persons who sits on their board is the Deputy Minister of Police [Polly Boshielo and Cassel Mathale], and ultimately Psira answers to the Department of Police.

So it’s a very interesting dynamic that the private sector is in a sense managed by components of the South African Police Service [SAPS], albeit there is no formal relationship.

There are a couple of MoUs [Memorandum of Understanding] like Bacsa [Business Against Crime South Africa] has, called E2 [Eyes and Ears], and CCIN [Civilian Crime Intelligence Network] has, but there’s no formalised relationship between the private sector and the public sector. Yet they answer to the same minister. It’s exceptionally interesting.

Read: SA’s police serve ANC insiders, not the people

Another interesting dynamic is that the industry has grown exponentially from the 1990s and in essence replaced policing in suburbia.

People with money can afford private security. People who don’t have money are the victims of crime because they don’t have private security patrolling informal settlements, patrolling different areas in the CBD and in places where there isn’t sufficient money to be able to hire protection.

Read: SA gun violence: Why current strategies are failing to reduce stats [Nov 2024]

That’s sad, because the protection of the citizenry of our land is mandated for the state to be responsible for. It’s a constitutional requirement. Yet we’re seeing more and more security being outsourced.

We’re now sitting at 2.2 million registered security officers, of which between 600 000 and 800 000 are operational. There are tens of thousands of security companies operating. And herein lies a problem.

When you’ve got so many companies vying for the same work, they start undercutting one another. They start using unregistered, untrained individuals, which is a criminal offence. They start taking out competition.

We’ve seen it on the mines in Mpumalanga, we’ve seen it with the buildings in Hillbrow, we’ve seen it with the clubs in Cape Town.

Read: High-tech partnership boosts crime-fighting in Gauteng [Aug 2024]

The organisations that are meant to be looking after us or were meant to be taking up the slack where we see issues within policing, those particular organisations in the private security sector themselves are now being infiltrated by bad actors.

JEREMY MAGGS: What I’m hearing you say, Chad, is that we’ve seen this rapid growth of private security, which is obviously outpacing regulation and oversight, which raises the question about whether the industry can now realistically police itself or we need far tougher state control, but that doesn’t seem to be forthcoming.

CHAD THOMAS: Psira has the money. You must understand that every single security officer in their individual capacity, and every single security company has to pay a fee to Psira to be able to operate lawfully.

They have to be trained at a Psira-regulated training facility or receive recognition of prior learning, and they have to be vetted so that they don’t have criminal records. Sam Chauke, who heads up Psira, is doing the job of trying to ensure that the industry is policed correctly, but it’s not happening simply because they haven’t invested enough resources.

Now, what’s very interesting is that an inspector from Psira has full peace officer status. That means that they have the same functions as a police officer. So if an inspector from Psira comes out and inspects and finds something unlawful taking place, he can make an arrest, take the suspects to the local police station and they can be charged.

At the same time, we’ve seen that Psira has got their own internal prosecutors who are working to try and clean up the industry. There are just not enough of them.

What we are also finding is that Psira concentrates on the low-hanging fruit. In other words, registered security companies, they know where they’re operating from. They may have fallen foul of compliance or governance on one or two issues. They will be raided. But the actual bad actors who are not registered, who are using undocumented immigrants to supply security services, it’s difficult to find them.

In some instances, perhaps it’s scary to confront them because you’re dealing with criminals masquerading as security officers.

So Psira needs to seriously up their game. They are a great organisation. They’ve got the capacity to fund further investigations and inspectors. They now need to capacitate.

JEREMY MAGGS: And how do they do that? How do they up their game?

CHAD THOMAS: They need to increase the number of inspectors ten, 20, 30, 40-fold. They need to show that they are not going to go after low-hanging fruit, because there’s a lot of distrust from the industry.

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You’ll find that a lot of registered security companies will have a complaint submitted against them by a client or a disgruntled ex-security officer who was disciplined and perhaps felt that he was badly done by, and that the company will then be raided. It’s good that they’ve been inspected, but they get raided.

But when you see complaints being submitted to Psira of unregistered security companies operating, it’s very rare that you see them actually investigating who the ultimate beneficial owners are. They’ll go to car parks, they’ll go to nightclubs, they’ll raid. They’ll find the unregistered security officers standing outside. They’ll arrest them, but they won’t investigate further as into who’s benefiting from placing these unregistered security officers on the beat. And therein lies a massive problem.

Psira is doing their job. If you follow Psira on social media, every single day, you’ll see them post [reports] of dismantling operations where they’ve come across unregistered car guards or they’ve come across unregistered bouncers.

Read: Car guards: Barriers to entry leave them hungry [Jun 2023]

But what we are not seeing are the masterminds who are behind this, who are setting up proxies to buy security companies, to find legitimate firearms, and to undercut legitimate security companies who are paying the correct rate to their security officers and not exploiting them.

One must always remember, security has a massive human factor and if you’re not looking after that product, if you’re not paying that product what they should be getting paid, they are going to become a problem.

JEREMY MAGGS: And what do we know, Chad, of these masterminds? Who are they?

CHAD THOMAS: It seems like everybody’s jumped onto the bandwagon. It’s unbelievable. Everybody’s seen a gap within the security industry. This comes down to our criminal justice system.

When you see that SAPS cannot provide a service any longer. When you see the low conviction rates of cases that are enrolled, it means that the security industry grows and the security industry becomes a viable investment for both good actors as well as bad actors.

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Bad actors, because they can use legitimacy of hiding behind a security company to extort on behalf of business forums, the so-called construction mafias, water mafias and so on.

At the same time, you see that the bad actors want access to legitimate weapons so that they can settle their squabbles. They can settle their scores using their militias.

There was an incident in Sandton about two years ago, where two rival security company owners who were vying for security of the clubs, because if you control the door at the club, you control what gets dealt inside the club if the club is dealing drugs. They were vying for control of these clubs. That ended up in a shooting and one of those guys got killed.

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It later turned out that that particular security company owner was one of the people wanted in the Marumo Phenya assassination. So we now see security companies using their people actively in the underworld to conduct hits.

JEREMY MAGGS: Chad Thomas, thank you very much indeed. A very disturbing situation. Organised crime investigator at IRS Forensic Investigations. I do appreciate your time. Thank you so much.

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