Private security armed but unaccountable: New regulations seek to change that:
With 608 977 registered, active security officers compared to just 150 388 employees registered in terms of the South African Police Service Act, our private security industry is four times larger than our police service. Yet this massive — and lucrative — industry operates with minimal oversight and control, flying well below the radar.
The recently published draft regulations for South Africa’s private security industry are a much-needed step toward addressing a regulatory gap that has persisted for far too long.
This imbalance between the private security industry and the police is particularly glaring, given South Africa’s rising crime rate. While the security industry has grown by 35% (from 451 565 guards in 2014-15 to 608 977 in 2023-24), the country has seen a 62% increase in murder (from 17 023 in 2013-14 to 27 494 in 2022-23) and an almost 50% increase in attempted murder (from 16 989 to 25 131) during a similar period. This stark contrast raises questions about the industry’s effectiveness in addressing crime.
More troubling is the evidence suggesting that elements in the private security industry might be contributing to criminality. Research dating back to 2012 has identified persistent and worsening problems.
These include inadequate firearms stockpile management. To illustrate, the Private Security Industry Regulatory Authority has repeatedly raised concerns that dysfunction at the Central Firearms Registry (the police unit responsible for firearms management) means the authority does not know what the industry firearms and ammunition stocks are, which creates loopholes for diversion.
This is a particular risk when a company closes down or when, for example, a contract to provide armed guards ends, without any mechanism to monitor its licensed firearms.
A second, long-standing — and worsening — problem is criminal infiltration of security companies. Examples are the case of alleged gang leader Nafiz Modack, currently before the Western Cape high court; private security companies being used to arm hitmen for political and taxi violence and a recent case where four of the six men killed by police with extortion kingpin Yanga “Bara” Nyalara in Cape Town were registered security guards.
A third problem is the diversion of private security industry firearms and ammunition to criminal networks. On average, private security companies report the loss or theft of six guns a day, according to parliamentary records. Sometimes this is due to deliberate criminality by the industry but there are numerous reports of guards being specifically targeted for their weapons.
The draft regulations seek to address these issues through several key provisions that deserve support. First, comprehensive record-keeping and reporting requirements for firearm and ammunition stocks; gun-discharge incidents as well as the fitness and proficiency of armed guards. This will improve accountability and traceability.
Second, the establishment of limits on firearm types according to specific security functions: handguns or shotguns for armed response and close protection; bolt-action rifles for anti-poaching operations and semi-automatic rifles restricted to cash-in-transit protection. This move aligns with globally recognised principles for reducing gun violence based on limits on types of guns and ammunition and the users and the uses of guns.
Third, the requirement to install tracking devices on all firearms represents a positive step toward preventing them from being diverted to criminal networks.
Finally, prohibiting security officers from carrying firearms in crowded public spaces like shopping malls, schools and taxi ranks acknowledges the significant risks posed by firearms in these environments. A shootout in a public space puts the lives of many people at risk, a threat that far outweighs the possible safety benefits.
Some provisions of the draft regulations require clarification or strengthening. The proposal to limit the ammunition carried by officers to a “reasonable” quantity needs clearer definition to be effective.
The requirement for annual medical, psychometric and psychiatric evaluations to ensure that armed guards are fit and proper for this responsibility is well-intentioned but should specifically target the two biggest risk factors for future violence: a history of violence and alcohol misuse. For instance, prohibiting individuals with drunk-driving convictions from serving as armed guards would be a concrete step towards improving public safety.
Similarly, the provision restricting the use of less-lethal weapons like rubber bullets and water cannons appears aimed at preventing private security companies from engaging in public-order policing — a function constitutionally reserved for specifically trained and equipped police members. This is particularly important given the evidence from the July 2021 unrest, which showed that many deaths resulted from shootings by civilians, including private security guards illegally using lethal force to protect property.
A further consideration is the longstanding lack of harmonisation between the Firearms Control Act (2000) and the Private Security Industry Regulation Act (2001) and associated regulations.
While the 2025 draft regulations include a range of proposals that are aimed at synchronisation, there seem to be overlaps which highlight the importance of enforcement, rather than amendment.
For example, Gun Free South Africa has been inundated with queries from members of the public complaining about bodyguards openly carrying high-calibre weapons in restaurants, churches, shopping centres and townhouse complexes. Aside from the fact that these types of weapons are not effective in close protection, section 84 of the Firearms Control Act requires that guns carried in public must be concealed — security guards are not exempt from this requirement.
For these regulations to succeed, the Private Security Industry Regulatory Authority must have sufficient capacity to conduct compliance inspections and enforce the rules. This amendment process presents an opportunity to strengthen oversight mechanisms for the entire industry.
With 33 people shot dead every day in South Africa, strengthening control over firearms and ammunition, and improving oversight of the private security sector, are urgent priorities.
These draft regulations represent an important step towards creating a safer country for all South Africans. Their publication creates space for engagement before formal tabling, allowing all stakeholders — from industry representatives to community members — to contribute to a framework that will enhance public safety.
Dr Stanley Maphosa is the executive director of Gun Free South Africa.
Cop ‘asked me if I know Jesus’ — accused one in Joslin Smith kidnapping takes the stand:
The first accused in the Joslin Smith kidnapping and trafficking trial told the Western Cape high court on Friday that he was tortured by police officers who tried to force him into confessing — at one point asking if he “knew Jesus” before putting a black bag over his head.
The testimony was delivered by Jacquen “Boeta” Appollis during the ongoing trial-within-a-trial — a separate legal proceeding to determine whether confessions made by him and accused two, Steveno van Rhyn, can be admitted as evidence.
Appollis’s disputed confession was also read to the court, line by line, with him indicating which parts were truthful and which were allegedly false and coerced.
At the start of the day’s proceedings, he claimed that he was subjected to hours of violence and psychological intimidation at the hands of at least four police officers on 4 May 2024, at the Sea Border offices.
Then six-year-old Joslin went missing from her family’s shack in the Middelpos informal settlement in the Saldanha Bay area on 19 February, while in the care of Appollis. She has not been seen since.
The state alleges that her mother Kelly Smith, who is accused three and the partner of Appollis, orchestrated the sale of the child to a sangoma.
Van Rhyn and Lourentia Lombaard — who was an accused in the matter until becoming a state witness last year — were allegedly offered hush money after they overheard Smith telling Appollis about the plan the day before Joslin was allegedly sold.
Testifying in Afrikaans, which was translated by a court interpreter, Appollis told the court that, after repeatedly telling the officers he did not know where the child was, “They told me I was talking shit and that this was the day I was going to die.”
According to Appollis, two police officers in civilian clothing — one described as Xhosa and another as coloured with a beard — handcuffed him, forced him to the floor in an office in the Sea Border building, and inserted a metal pipe behind his knees. Several other officers were witnesses to this, he claimed.
He was then lifted off the ground in a contorted position, with his legs suspended and his head hanging down.
“One of them asked me if I knew Jesus,” he testified. “I said ‘yes’. Then he pulled a black bag over my head.”
Being led by his advocate, Fanie Harmse, Appollis alleged that the officers instructed him to nod or shake his head when he wanted to speak, while the bag was over his head. “As I found I couldn’t breathe, I nodded and they took it off,” he said.
The alleged interrogation escalated from there. “They asked me where Joslin was. I said I don’t know. Then they hit me with batons — on my knees, feet, hands — and slapped me hard in the face,” he said. “I became dizzy.”
Appollis estimated the alleged ordeal lasted late into the night. “They kept putting the bag over my head and kept asking me where Joslin was,” he said. Each time, he replied that he did not know.
He described how, later that night, Van Rhyn was brought into the offices and allegedly subjected to the same treatment. Appollis said he witnessed Van Rhyn being suspended in the same manner, beaten and suffocated.
While this was happening, Appollis claimed he was bound with cable ties and wrapped in a large blue police flag, with his head exposed. Officers allegedly continued to beat him with batons while Van Rhyn was interrogated.
According to his testimony, the police questioned him about a woman named Makalima, who lives in the Middelpos area.
“They asked me if I knew her,” said Appollis. “When I said yes, they told me I must go show them where she lives. I said yes, I would.”
Makalima appears to refer to Phumza Sigaqa. Sigaqa was arrested on 5 March 2024 and appeared in court twice in the early days of the investigation as the alleged sangoma Joslin was sold to.
Charges against her were withdrawn because there was no evidence implicating her in the child’s disappearance. Sigaqa has not yet been called as a witness and it is unclear if she will be.
Continuing his testimony, Appollis said the police officers handcuffed him and drove him to point out Makalima’s shack. He did this while in a police car, he said. Many police vehicles in a convoy had arrived at the woman’s home.
The officers then took Makalima, her husband and her two children to the Sea Border offices, he said.
Shortly after, while he was waiting in the car, two male detectives — one described by Appollis earlier as the Xhosa man — allegedly told Appollis that he must tell Makalima “to her face” that he and Van Rhyn had taken Joslin to her as part of the sale.
Appollis said that when he was taken to Makalima in the Sea Border building, he saw she was handcuffed and two female officers were “hitting her feet with batons”.
The officers again told him to tell Makalima that he and Van Rhyn “took Joslin to her [on 19 February]”.
“I told her that,” Appollis said. Makalima responded by asking him, “How can you do this?” he told the court.
The officers then told Appollis they were taking him to Smith and he should tell her that she had instructed him to take Joslin to Makalima on the day of her disappearance, and that Makalima would pay him R20 000 for the child. (This formed part of the disputed confession that was read in court.)
After he told Smith what police had allegedly told him to say, the officers again put him in a vehicle, said Appollis. He remained there, handcuffed, for the remainder of the night, he told the court.
It was at about 4am the following morning, 5 March 2024, while he was still in the vehicle, that Sergeant Felicia Johnson approached him, read him his rights and arrested him.
Appollis was then placed in another car and transported to hospital for a medical check-up. This was done by different police officers.
When he was returned to the Sea Border offices, he allegedly made his false confession, according to Appollis, because he “didn’t want to be assaulted again”. He was then taken for another medical check-up.
The court has previously heard medical evidence from the doctors who examined Appollis and Van Rhyn before and after their disputed confessions.
Both doctors told the court they did not observe any signs of physical abuse that were consistent with what the men had described. The accused had not told them about the alleged assaults.
In their plea explanations, both men used exactly the same words to describe the alleged torture they suffered.
According to the disputed confession read out in court, Appollis, Van Rhyn and Joslin went to Makalima’s shack on Monday 19 February. Appollis told the woman Smith had sent him. He asked her “how the money business is going to work”.
Makalima told him she had already spoken to Smith about that. Joslin was playing with Makalima’s children, he said, and he and Van Rhyn returned to the shack that he, Smith, Joslin and her brothers lived in.
None of this was true, said Appollis.
The state started its cross-examination of Appollis on Friday afternoon.
The language gap hits students hard when they get to university:
South Africa is celebrated as a rainbow nation, rich in linguistic and cultural diversity, with 12 official languages reflecting its complex heritage.
Despite this multilingual reality, English — a language spoken by the minority of the country’s population, which means the majority of students enter university level having studied English as a first additional language — remains the dominant language of teaching and learning in education institutions (from the intermediate phase in primary school to tertiary level).
While these first additional language (FAL) learners may have passed English in high school, they often arrive at university without the level of language proficiency required for academic success. Many struggle with reading dense texts, drafting coherent essays and expressing themselves fluently during discussions. This language gap raises serious concerns about fairness, access and meaningful participation in higher education.
The challenges faced by English FAL learners at university have their roots in the structure and implementation of the basic education system. The Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) distinguishes between two language levels — home language and first additional language.
Learners at the home language level are expected to develop both interpersonal communication and cognitive academic skills that support learning across the curriculum, with strong emphasis placed on listening, speaking, reading and writing.
This level also aims to develop learners’ “literary, aesthetic and imaginative skills”, enabling them to engage creatively and critically with the world around them.
In contrast, the FAL level assumes no prior exposure to English — a fair assumption — and initially focuses on basic interpersonal communication. Over time, the emphasis shifts to developing the ability to think and reason in English, equipping learners with the cognitive academic language skills needed to study subjects such as science and accounting through English.
In practice, these goals are rarely achieved.
Although CAPS specifies that learners should also “engage more with literary texts and begin to develop aesthetic and imaginative ability in their additional language”, this is typically limited to surface-level question-and-answer tasks. The focus is not on fostering deep analytical or interpretive skills, but rather on whether learners can simply understand the language used in the text.
This problem is further compounded by overcrowded classrooms, limited teacher training and a curriculum delivery model that prioritises exam preparation over meaningful language development.
As a result, many learners progress through school without ever fully mastering the foundational skills needed to succeed in an English-medium academic environment.
When students who studied English as a first additional language join university courses that need advanced language skills, such as English literature, history, law or any field that requires critical analysis, they frequently find themselves at a significant disadvantage. These courses challenge students to read dense academic books, analyse sophisticated arguments and write well-structured responses that exhibit critical thinking.
Many FAL learners struggle not with the topic itself, but with articulating their understanding coherently and academically in English. They may thus perform poorly, not because they are not smart or perceptive, but because they are unable to express themselves fully in writing, which frequently results in frustration, a loss of confidence, and in certain situations, the dropping of classes in which they could succeed if they had better language support.
The difficulties faced by English FAL learners at university are not just theoretical — they are lived, daily realities. I know this firsthand. When I began my first year of university, I found myself overwhelmed by the demands of academic writing, especially during the Covid-19 lockdown when all communication was online.
After receiving disappointing results for my essays, I emailed my lecturers for feedback. The common response was that my content was strong, but my essay structure was lacking. I was never guided on what that structure should look like because of the level of English I studied in high school.
I did not know how to develop an academic argument or what it meant to “integrate” my research into my writing, not just simply quote it. These were not skills I had been taught in high school, and without clear support, I was left to figure it out alone.
This is an experience that many other students have. Research by Bertus van Rooy and Susan Coetzee-Van Rooy found that implicit academic literacy demands at university such as structuring arguments and incorporating source material are difficult for English FAL students to meet. Academic writing is not only a
skill; it is a language in and of itself, something that colleges frequently forget.
In an environment where success depends on argument, clarity and source integration, students are expected to pick up this language overnight without any explicit instruction.
According to academic Chrissie Boughey, the presumption that students are prepared for academic discourse when they come to university leads to the marginalisation of people who do not speak this “language” well. Without early and deliberate intervention, these students continue to perform below expectations, not because they lack potential but rather because of unbridled systemic disparities.
While universities can be more supportive to students who struggle with academic literacy, the department of basic education is the one responsible for equipping learners with sufficient language skills. The university curriculum is standardised and assumes a level of academic readiness; it is not the root problem, which is the school system that differentiates the language instruction through these home language and FAL levels.
This differentiated model naturally recognises that some learners begin school with no prior exposure to the English language, therefore it is the primary and secondary school levels where language skills must be strengthened early and consistently.
The development of cognitive academic language proficiency, which includes explicit instruction in essay writing, argument development, source integration and critical engagement with texts must be prioritised in the revised FAL curriculum, moving beyond basic comprehension and interpersonal communication.
Teachers must be trained to teach these skills in the FAL framework, and assessment models must reflect this change in emphasis. According to Van Rooy and Coetzee-Van Rooy, a significant factor in the language difficulties that students encounter at the tertiary level is the discrepancy between language policy and classroom reality. FAL students will continue to falter without deliberate, curriculum-wide adjustments — not because they are incapable, but rather because they were never sufficiently prepared.
Although universities may still help these students more — providing writing centres (which most universities offer), language specialists and more lucid feedback — they should not be expected to solve an issue that ought to have been dealt with far sooner. Providing students with the appropriate resources at the appropriate time is essential to achieving true educational equity.
Sithembile Magwaza is an English teacher and inclusive language education advocate.
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