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Unrest readiness is built between crises, not during them

By Adriaan Otto, MD, Excellerate Services

Adriaan Otto

The 30 June marches passed largely peacefully, and that outcome was no accident. It was the result of preparation, and a level of cooperation between police, private security, communities and business that this country has not always managed.

July 2021 taught us what happens without it: the problem that week was never a lack of resources, but information that did not flow, organisations working in isolation, and decisions made too late. This time, SAPS, PSIRA, private security companies, community structures and businesses came to the table well before the day, shared information and planned for different scenarios together. It made all the difference.

The question now is not what went right on the day, but whether that coordination can become how we operate every day, not something we achieve only when trouble is expected. Disruption is something South African organisations must plan for as a matter of course, and the ones that cope best are never those deciding on the day, but those that put the right plans in place long before anything happens.

Verified intelligence matters

That kind of readiness runs on information. Useful and usable intelligence is about getting reliable information to the right people quickly, whether from officers on site, control rooms, community structures or business forums.

The first job is always verification. One report on its own is never enough. July 2021 also showed how fast misinformation spreads: deploy people on unverified social media posts and you lose time exactly when you can least afford it.

Our own assessments tracked the build-up to 30 June daily, and the hardest calls were not the warnings, but the downgrades, concluding, as evidence firmed up, that the country faced localised incidents rather than a nationwide shutdown. That is what the day delivered. The earliest assessments also flagged that the deadline would not be an endpoint. Verified intelligence is as much about ruling risks out as raising them; over-calling a threat misdirects resources as surely as missing one.

Technology supports people

Technology shortens that chain. Camera networks, number plate recognition and analytics build a live operational picture, and certified drones can stream aerial footage directly into a joint operational command, but technology gives good people better information. It does not replace experience or judgement, and its real value is cutting the time between something happening, understanding it, and responding.

Even then, technology can only tell you what is happening. Communities can often tell you why. A camera shows you that people are gathering. Someone who lives there can tell you who organised it, what the mood is, and whether it will stay peaceful. We have seen respected local voices calm tensions before any security response was needed. This requires relationships built over time, not on the morning of a protest.

Clear plans and clear roles

None of this works without clear roles. Public order policing is, and must remain, the responsibility of the SAPS. Private security’s job is protecting people, property, business operations and critical infrastructure. Those roles complement rather than compete. On 30 June, they extended the reach of the police considerably. Between residential estates, business precincts, shopping centres and commercial facilities, no one organisation can cover everything alone.

Businesses and property owners are part of that network too, and my advice is not to wait for a crisis. Get to know your local SAPS station, community policing forum, precinct structures and neighbouring businesses. Understand your own risks.

Link your business continuity plan directly to your security plan, decide in advance who makes the big calls, and exercise those plans. A document sitting in a file is not a plan. Treat your security provider as a strategic partner rather than a service provider; the more involved they are in planning, the better prepared everyone is.

Much of what worked on 30 June came down to strong professional relationships, and those should not be the only reason the system works. There is a real opportunity to formalise the collaboration: national information-sharing protocols, agreed operating procedures, regular joint exercises, and greater clarity around private security’s role during major public order events, with intelligence flowing back from law enforcement to teams in the field.

Trust is the foundation to success

Underpinning everything is trust. The public is right to ask questions about surveillance, and every deployment should pass a simple test: is it appropriate to the risk being managed? Information should be collected for a specific purpose, access tightly controlled, activity fully auditable, and everything conducted within POPIA, SACAA regulations and the PSIRA Code of Conduct. If people lose confidence in how surveillance is managed, they lose confidence in the organisations using it.

It is never the organisation with the most resources that performs best in a crisis, but the one that makes good decisions quickly because it has accurate information, clear leadership and partners it trusts. Coordination beats numbers, almost every time.

That will be tested again soon. The organisers have made clear that 30 June was not an endpoint; weekly marches are planned for the months ahead, running into an election season where these tensions will be worked hard. The real test was never what happened on the day. It is whether the coordination that held then can hold every week, because readiness begins long before anything happens, and it is built between crises, not during them.

Find out more at www.excellerateservices.co.za

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