Let us engage directly with the national narrative currently dominating South Africa’s public sector. The widespread call for government departments, municipalities, and State-Owned Entities (SOEs) to mass-insource private security services is routinely packaged as a moral crusade for decent work and social justice. It is an appealing argument on the surface promising permanent government salaries, dignity, and stability to frontline security officers.

However, when we look past political rhetoric and evaluate operational facts, a very different picture comes into focus. Wholesale insourcing is not a silver bullet; it is a fundamental misdiagnosis of the security industry’s challenges. By mistaking the symptoms of worker exploitation for the structure of outsourcing itself, policymakers risk adopting measures that dismantle black-owned small businesses, bankrupt public treasuries, and compromise the safety of critical state infrastructure.

As the leading employer association representing historically marginalized, black-owned small, Medium, and Micro Enterprises (SMMEs) who deploy the vast majority of security officers across the state, TAPSOSA takes a direct and firm stance against wholesale insourcing. We are not defending bad labour practices or advocating for the status quo. Instead, we advocate for Ethical, Highly Regulated Outsourcing, a sustainable framework that guarantees worker dignity, strictly enforces statutory wages, and protects the operational flexibility and specialized expertise that only dedicated private providers can offer.

To understand what is truly at risk, we must examine the economic history and structure of South Africa’s private security industry. During the apartheid era, security and cleaning services were neglected as non-core functions, paving the way for outsourced arrangements that initially benefited a privileged minority. Under the democratic dispensation, the state deliberately disrupted that legacy. Outsourcing was transformed into an instrument of redress through Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (B-BBEE) policies and PSiRA legislation requiring majority South African ownership.

Today, private security serves as one of the single most viable entry points for black entrepreneurs and emerging businesses in South Africa. Small, Medium, and Micro Enterprises make up over 90% of formal security businesses. Collapsing the outsourced model effectively abandons B-BBEE as a tool for economic inclusion. It converts emerging black entrepreneurs back into state employees, wiping out decades of wealth creation and business development.

Furthermore, political calls for insourcing focus almost exclusively on frontline guards standing at a gate, completely ignoring the broader support chain. A functional security apparatus relies on a complex network of operational managers, dispatchers, uniform manufacturers, tactical equipment suppliers, K9 trainers, and technology installers. Mass insourcing destroys these supporting enterprises, triggering widespread job losses throughout the supply chain.

Security officers have repeatedly been dragged through political mudslinging during election cycles. They are enticed with promises of direct government employment in what at the time amounts to manna from heaven while politicians ignore the root causes of their daily challenges, such as late invoice payments by state entities and cut-throat tendering practices.

We do not need to speculate about what happens when public institutions attempt to run their own internal security apparatus, the operational track record across South Africa provides a clear warning.

Between 2018 and 2025, the City of Johannesburg insourced approximately 4,000 security guards under the promise of cost reduction and direct municipal employment. The actual outcome was a structural and financial crisis where the city ended up paying twice.

Because the municipal structure lacked a dedicated security command centre, patrol vehicles, communication radios, and specialized supervisory networks, the insourced force could not secure city property. To keep critical sites safe, the city was forced to spend over R16 million every month hiring private security firms on top of paying permanent salaries for 4,000 insourced guards. Over five years, infrastructure break-ins, hijacking of municipal buildings, and vandalism cost the city more than R182 million. The city traded professional protection for a double-spending burden.

When the Gauteng Health Department moved to internalize hospital and clinic security, expenditure tripled within two years. The rapidly expanding Compensation of Employees (CoE) budget swallowed operational funds. Within 18 months, there was no maintenance budget left to repair broken equipment, service patrol vehicles, or replenish uniforms. Healthcare facilities were left exposed, and guards were left working without essential tools.

The hasty removal of specialized private security contractors along South Africa’s rail corridors led to catastrophic results. Without agile, tactical private security units equipped for rapid response, rail corridors suffered systematic stripping of copper cabling, destruction of signaling infrastructure, and complete operational failure.

The core economic argument used by proponents of insourcing is that removing the private contractor’s profit margin will save public money. In practice, this argument is an illusion. In-house security operations incur structural overheads that far exceed a private contractor’s margin.

Private Security Companies (PSCs) spread the high costs of tactical vehicles, specialized firearms, radio infrastructure, and biometric monitoring systems across dozens of corporate and public clients. An insourcing government department must fund 100% of this equipment upfront using public treasury funds. When budgets run tight, equipment maintenance is neglected, leading to rapid operational decay.

Independent audits demonstrate that operating an in-house security department cost between 30% and 40% more than outsourcing. This premium stems from additional administrative overhead, HR management, specialized vetting, continuous retraining, and the complex scheduling required to cover a 24/7/365 shift roster.

When a security emergency or sudden unrest occurs, a private security firm can scale up operations and deploy dozens of tactical officers within hours. A government HR department operates under slow, rigid procurement processes and cannot dynamically shift personnel. If an internal workforce experiences high absenteeism, state facilities are left unprotected.

Under a private contract, the security provider carries public liability and professional indemnity insurance. If an officer uses excessive force or commits negligence, the private company absorbs the legal liability. Under an insourced model, the state department absorbs multi-million-rand lawsuits directly.

If outsourcing itself is not the underlying cause of worker distress, we must ask the hard question: why do security officers continue to experience poor working conditions and delayed compensation? The answer does not lie in the structure of private enterprise; it lies squarely in the systemic failures of public sector procurement and financial management.

The primary driver of worker exploitation is the state’s reliance on the lowest-bidder tendering principle. Time and again, government departments award security contracts based almost exclusively on the cheapest price, completely disregarding operational realism and statutory wage baselines. This creates an unsustainable race to the bottom. Responsible, compliant employers who factor in full statutory wages, benefits, equipment, and training are routinely undercut by unscrupulous operators willing to squeeze worker pay just to win a bid.

Compounding this problem is the pervasive issue of delayed invoice payments by government institutions. State departments routinely fail to settle service provider invoices within statutory timeframes, often holding payments for months to bridge their own internal budget shortfalls or accumulate interest. This places immense financial strain on compliant security employers who are left scrambling to cover massive payroll obligations without incoming cash flow.

Crucially, South Africa does not lack the legal tools to fix these problems. Frameworks such as the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA), Treasury Regulations, the Public Procurement Act, and PSiRA regulations already exist to enforce fair procurement, mandate minimum standards, and punish corrupt or non-compliant practices. The issue is a severe breakdown in management, oversight, and consequence management within state institutions. Instead of enforcing existing laws to penalize bad actors and pay compliant service providers on time, political actors use insourcing as a convenient diversion to avoid fixing their own administrative shortcomings.

Rather than pursuing wholesale insourcing, TAPSOSA advocates for a balanced model that protects workers, supports SMMEs, and safeguards state resources. Public entities should adopt Ethical, Outcome-Based Contracting. Under this model, the client retains full control over standards, performance metrics, and compliance oversight, while the private provider manages operational risks, equipment logistics, and workforce management. Contracts must strictly mandate compliance with statutory bargaining council wages and PSiRA regulations.

For state entities that require direct strategic control, TAPSOSA recommends insourcing only high-level Command and Control Management roles to maintain institutional memory and oversight. Frontline guarding, specialized tactical response, and technical maintenance should remain outsourced to licensed private providers to preserve operational scalability.

TAPSOSA is executing a national campaign to shape policy through constructive dialogue:

• Evidence-Based Research: Commission comprehensive financial and operational impact studies comparing insourcing outcomes with ethical outsourcing across public entities.
• Stakeholder Roundtables: Host collaborative forums with government departments, National Treasury, PSiRA, municipal leaders, and labour unions to establish ethical procurement guidelines.
• Public Advocacy: Engage national platforms and industry media including dedicated dialogue series to inform policymakers and the public on the economic realities of private security.
• Legislative Engagement: Submit formal policy representations to Parliamentary Portfolio Committees and the Department of Employment and Labour to advocate for SMME preservation and compliance enforcement.

Mass insourcing is an unsustainable approach that replaces specialized security operations with administrative inefficiency, fiscal strain, and the destruction of black-owned enterprise. TAPSOSA remains committed to advancing worker dignity, protecting SMME employers, and ensuring that South Africa’s public sector receives cost-effective, professional security services.