The Specter and Labor of the Black Poor in South Africa’s Private Security Industry

Abstract

Private security has been the fastest growing industry in South Africa since the 1994 transition from apartheid to democracy. The expansion of private security stems from the combination of growing inequality, racialized poverty, a discourse of black criminality, distrust in the South African Police Service, and neoliberal faith in the private sector. In Johannesburg, private security companies profit from elite anxieties by encouraging the fortification of wealthy neighborhoods. Privatized strategies to prevent crime in elite neighborhoods rely on violence and racial profiling to regulate the movement of poor black men. Yet the industry relies on the labor of the very same population that it targets: poor black men. Building on ten years of ethnographic research on the South African private security industry, this chapter focuses on the experiences of low-wage black workers. As a primary source of entry-level work for African men, private security is one of the few options for poor South Africans in search of steady employment. Nevertheless, security jobs involve low wages and difficult, often dangerous conditions. In addition, black employees not only confront racism from bosses and clients but are also expected to use racial profiling to identify suspects. The profits of the private security industry, therefore, depend on both the specter and the labor of the black poor. This contradiction is one of the principal sources of instability that threatens to undermine the regime of privatized securitization in post-apartheid South Africa.