Behind high walls and barbed wire

Wired with alarms and surrounded by high walls, barbed wire, electric fences and motion sensors, with gun-toting private security is how visitors view South Africa. Picture: Rogan Ward

Wired with alarms and surrounded by high walls, barbed wire, electric fences and motion sensors, with gun-toting private security is how visitors view South Africa. Picture: Rogan Ward

Published Jan 29, 2015

Share

Does SA have the largest private security industry in the world? Africa Check’s Kate Wilkinson finds out

South Africa’s suburbs and business are wired with alarms and surrounded by high walls, barbed wire, electric fences and motion sensors. Big dogs with big teeth bark at strangers from behind steel gates. Gun-toting private security guards patrol the streets. The high levels of security are the first thing that many visitors to the country remark on.

But does South Africa really have the largest private security industry in the world as is so often claimed in dinner table conversation?

Some of the country’s politicians and police officials seem to think so.

Last year national police commissioner, Riah Phiyega, made the claim during the release of police crime statistics.

And three years ago, the then police minister, Nathi Mthethwa, used the claim to justify the need for the Private Security Industry Regulation Amendment Bill.

Musa Zondi – spokesman for the current minister of police – was little help: “I can’t answer what the source of data for the previous minister was,” he told Africa Check.

Phiyega’s spokesman, Solomon Makgale, said he believed her comments had been based on a report compiled by the Private Security Industry Regulatory Authority (Psira).

According to a Psira document compiled for a 2013 workshop on guarding and security, the South African private security industry is “considered one of the largest in the world”.

A spokesman for the organisation, Mpho Mofikoe, said its recent research did not show that South Africa had the largest security industry in the world.

Psira’s 2013/14 annual report shows that out of 1 868 398 registered security officers in South Africa, 487 058 were classified as active. This includes people employed in security, active guarding, cash-in-transit and armed response businesses.

By comparison, the SAPS employs 194 852 people – 103 746 people are employed in visible policing and 6 331 people are employed in protection and security services.

The most recent and comprehensive international comparison of the private security industry was conducted in 2011 by the Small Arms Survey, an independent research project at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Switzerland.

The 2011 study contains data on the private security industries in 70 countries around the world.

Nicolas Florquin, the principal author, told Africa Check that comparing the relative sizes of private security industries in different countries wasn’t straightforward. “Generally speaking, data on (private security company) personnel is full of caveats and (it’s) difficult to compare country to country due to varying reporting practices”.

Darren Olivier, a senior correspondent for the African Defence Review, echoed this.

“International comparisons are tricky both because not all countries accurately track the data and those that do, often have varying criteria for what types of jobs are grouped into the category,” he explained.

Despite these limitations, the Small Arms Survey’s 2011 study provides interesting insights.

Security

India is the country with the largest private security industry.

Seven million people are employed by security companies there. China comes second with 5 million, Russia next with 800 000 and then Brazil (570 000), Japan (459 305) and Mexico (450 000). South Africa is seventh on the list with 387 273 security personnel in 2011. (Psira’s latest annual report shows the figure now stands at 487 058.)

But Olivier said absolute numbers were not useful for comparative purposes because they revealed little about the impact on the country. “(For example) 1 million private security guards in India would be nothing. The same number in Swaziland would be notable. So ratios…are probably the only useful method of comparison,” he explained.

The 2011 Small Arms Survey provides ratios for the number of private security personnel per 100 000 people in the country and the number of private security personnel compared to police.

In relation to South Africa’s population, there were 806 private security personnel for every 100 000 people. This placed it fourth in the rankings behind Guatemala (944), Panama (928) and Honduras (870). This ratio takes a country’s population size into account and allows private security industries to be fairly compared.

The rankings showed that South Africa had 2.57 private security personnel for every police employee. This placed South Africa in fourth place behind Guatemala (6.01), India (4.98) and Honduras (4.88).

Olivier believes this is the most useful measure of a country’s security industry: “(it) determines to what extent a country’s security is in the hands of private security as opposed to state security forces”.

Africa Check’s conclusion: the claim is false

Both Mthethwa and Phiyega failed to provide evidence to support their claims. While South Africa does have one of the largest private security industries in the world, the most comprehensive survey to date of the global private security industry does not support the claim.

South Africa employs more private security personnel than police. But it doesn’t top any of the international rankings when it comes to the size of its private security industry. In absolute numbers and ratios other countries fare much higher.

* This article first appeared on Africa Check (http://www.africacheck.org), a non-profit organisation run from the Journalism Department at the University of the Witwatersrand, which promotes accuracy in public debate, testing claims made by public figures around the continent

** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.

Daily News

Related Topics: