I walked into a residential building in Sea Point last month. Premium development. R3 million apartments. Concierge desk. Designer finishes. The kind of place where every detail has been considered by an architect and approved by a developer who cares about quality. Then I looked at the security. A guard sitting behind a desk with a hardcover A4 notebook. Visitors sign in with a pen. No ID verification. No digital record. No way for the building manager to know who entered the building at 2am last Tuesday without physically driving to site and flipping through pages of illegible handwriting. This is not an exception. This is the norm. And it is a ticking liability for every body corporate, managing agent, and property developer in South Africa.
The Numbers Tell a Stark Story
South Africa’s private security industry is the largest in the world. There are more than 10,380 registered security companies and over 2.5 million registered security personnel in the country. That is roughly 2.6 private security employees for every single police officer. The industry is not small. It is not niche. It is a critical pillar of how South Africans protect their homes, their businesses, and their communities.
Yet a recent academic study published in the Southern African Journal of Security this month found what many of us in the industry already know: there are significant gaps in digital competency among security personnel and the regulatory framework under the PSIRA Act of 2002 is outdated when it comes to governing the use of AI and emerging technologies in private security. The study called for inclusive training programmes and updated legislation. I agree. But we cannot wait for regulation to catch up. The buildings we protect need better systems today.
The Paper Problem Is a Data Problem
When a guard writes an incident in a paper OB book, that information dies on the page. It cannot be searched. It cannot be cross-referenced. It cannot be analysed for patterns. It cannot be shared with the managing agent in real time. It cannot be used to identify that the same vagrant has been removed from the same stairwell fourteen times this quarter, suggesting a structural access control failure rather than a policing issue.
When a patrol is tracked with a clipboard and a signature sheet, there is no way to verify that the guard actually walked the route. There is no GPS trail. There is no timestamp that cannot be falsified. There is no data that tells you which corridors are patrolled most frequently and which are consistently skipped.
This is not a technology problem. It is a governance problem. Body corporates and managing agents are making decisions about security budgets, guard deployments, and risk mitigation strategies based on no data at all. They are flying blind. And when something goes wrong — a break-in, an assault in a parking garage, a liability claim — the only evidence is a smudged entry in a notebook that may or may not hold up in court.
We stopped asking “did the guard do his patrol?” and started asking “what did the data from the patrol tell us about the building’s risk profile?” That shift changes everything.
— Rujhio Phillips, Group COO, SecaTeq GroupWhat the Alternative Looks Like
At SecaTeq, we made a decision early on that technology would not be an add-on. It would be the foundation. Every guard in our operation clocks in using AI-powered facial recognition. Not a fingerprint scanner that can be shared. Not a PIN code that gets written on a locker. Their face. Verified against a biometric profile, timestamped, and GPS-tagged to confirm they are physically at the site they are assigned to. If a guard is not on site, we know within minutes. Not hours. Not the next morning when someone checks the register.
Every patrol is tracked via GPS in real time. The route, the duration, the checkpoints hit and missed. This data flows into an AI engine that identifies patterns: which guards consistently complete patrols early (rushing), which corridors have a higher incident frequency on specific days, and which sites are trending toward a risk threshold that warrants intervention before something happens.
Every incident is logged digitally with photographs, GPS coordinates, AI-generated categorisation, and automatic severity scoring. The managing agent sees it in real time. The body corporate chairperson gets a monthly report that is not a Word document typed by an administrator — it is an automatically generated intelligence briefing drawn from live operational data.
The Draft National AI Policy and What It Means for Security
South Africa’s Department of Communications and Digital Technologies has submitted the Draft National AI Policy to Cabinet for approval. It is expected to be gazetted for public comment this month, March 2026. This is a significant moment. Once finalised, the policy will set expectations around responsible AI usage, data governance, employee monitoring technologies, and algorithmic decision-making.
For the private security industry, this means the companies that have already integrated AI responsibly will be ahead of compliance. Those still operating on paper will face a double challenge: adopting technology and meeting regulatory standards simultaneously. The time to act was two years ago. The next best time is now.
At SecaTeq, we have built our systems with POPIA compliance at the core. Biometric consent is explicit and recorded. Data is encrypted. Access is role-based. Every piece of personal information we process — from a guard’s facial profile to a visitor’s ID scan — follows a governance framework that we believe will align with whatever the final AI policy requires.
What This Means for Managing Agents and Developers
If you manage a portfolio of residential buildings in Cape Town, ask yourself three questions:
First: Can you tell me, right now, whether every guard assigned to your buildings last night actually showed up, on time, at the correct site? If your answer involves phone calls, WhatsApp messages, or checking with a site manager tomorrow morning, your system has failed.
Second: If there was a security incident at one of your buildings at 3am last Saturday, can you produce a digital incident report with photographs, GPS location, guard response timeline, and AI-categorised severity within 60 seconds? If not, ask yourself what you would present to the body corporate trustees. Or to an insurance assessor. Or to the police.
Third: Do you know which of your buildings has the highest incident frequency per unit? Which has the slowest guard response time? Which has deteriorating patrol compliance? If you cannot answer these questions with data, you are not managing security. You are hoping for the best.
The gap between what technology can deliver and what most security providers actually offer is the widest it has ever been. That gap is where risk lives.
— Rujhio PhillipsThe Shift Is Already Happening
The buildings that get this right will attract better tenants, command higher premiums, and carry lower insurance risk profiles. The managing agents who demand technology-backed security from their service providers will differentiate themselves in a market where most agents offer the same thing: a guard, a radio, and a notebook.
We are not suggesting that technology replaces guards. It does not. A camera cannot detain a trespasser. An AI engine cannot comfort a resident after a break-in. Security will always be a people business. But the tools those people use, the data those tools generate, and the intelligence that data produces — that is what separates a security company from a security partner.
At SecaTeq, we operate across Cape Town, from one of the largest residential complexes on the Atlantic Seaboard to a heritage golf course. Every site runs on the same technology platform. Every guard carries the same digital toolkit. Every client receives the same standard of reporting and transparency. We are not the largest security company in South Africa. But we believe we are building the most intelligent one.
The OB book served its purpose. It is time to close it.
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Rujhio Phillips
Rujhio leads daily operations across SecaTeq Group’s security, facilities management, and hygiene divisions. He oversees the deployment of AI-powered workforce management technology across Cape Town and is responsible for client relations, staff performance, and regulatory compliance. Based in Cape Town, he is committed to raising the technology standard of the private security industry in South Africa.