Uniforms, PPE and equipment

The uniform is approved before you buy it

PSiRA assesses your uniform design as part of the business registration application, not afterwards. You upload a design, sketch or photograph as a JPEG, and it must show the full uniform with logos visible and colours either clear in the image or written onto the sketch. Your company logo goes up separately, also as a JPEG.

No shades of blue and no camouflage will be accepted. The reason is straightforward: a private security uniform may not be confusable with the police or the defence force. Exemptions can be applied for but are not the default and should not be assumed.

The practical consequence is a sequencing rule. Get the design decision from PSiRA first, then place the stock order. Operators who do it the other way round end up with a container of blue shirts they cannot lawfully put on a guard, and the money is gone.

The same application covers your insignia, title and symbol, so branding decisions belong in this conversation too rather than being made later by a signage supplier.

PPE is your cost, not your staff's

Section 8 of the Occupational Health and Safety Act 85 of 1993 puts a general duty on every employer to provide and maintain a working environment that is safe and without risk to health. Regulation 2 of the General Safety Regulations makes the money question explicit: where personal protective equipment is required, the employer must supply it at no cost to the employee.

That rules out the two arrangements the industry keeps reinventing. You may not require officers to buy their own protective equipment, and you may not deduct the cost from their wages. Both are breaches of the Act regardless of what the employment contract says.

For guarding work the equipment that usually falls in scope is high visibility clothing for anyone working near traffic, protective footwear, wet weather gear for outdoor posts, and any ballistic protection you require an officer to wear. If you require it for the job, you supply it and you maintain it, and you make sure the officer knows how to use it.

Whether a uniform itself counts as PPE depends on what it is for. A branded shirt is a uniform. A reflective jacket that keeps an officer visible on a roadside is protective equipment, and the no-cost rule applies to it.

Radios need a licence

This is the requirement most security operators do not know about. Section 31(1) of the Electronic Communications Act 36 of 2005 provides that no person may transmit any signal by radio, or use radio apparatus to receive a signal by radio, except under a radio frequency spectrum licence granted by ICASA, the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa.

Two categories matter in practice. Licence free radios operate at low power, typically half a watt, on designated frequencies, and need no spectrum licence. Licensed radios, the higher power VHF and UHF sets that most guarding and armed response operations actually run on, need an ICASA spectrum licence.

Applications go to ICASA and the turnaround is commonly around three months, so this belongs in your start-up timeline rather than being discovered when a compliance audit asks for the licence. Confirm the power output and frequency of the specific radios you are buying with the supplier, and get the answer in writing, because the licence question is decided by the equipment.

Firearm storage

If your business holds firearms, section 20(6) of the Firearms Control Act requires you to store and transport them as prescribed, and the Firearms Control Regulations set out what safe custody means. In practice SAPS expects an approved safe, properly mounted, with controlled access and a record of every movement in and out.

A caution rather than a specification: safe standards carry SABS approval numbers, and the applicable standard is the kind of detail that gets revised. Rather than buy on a supplier's assurance, confirm the current requirement against the Firearms Control Regulations or with your Designated Firearms Officer before you order, and keep the proof of approval with the safe. A safe that does not meet the prescribed standard fails an inspection whatever the invoice says about it.

The register that goes with the safe is covered in the business firearms guide, and it is inspected at the same time.

Cameras, body cams and monitoring

Every camera you deploy collects personal information, which puts it inside POPIA. Body worn cameras on officers, CCTV on a client site and vehicle tracking on your fleet are all processing operations, and each needs a lawful basis, a retention period and a way to answer an access request.

The two questions that matter most: how long do you keep the footage, and who can watch it. Both should be written down before the first camera goes up rather than after somebody asks. Our free POPIA check and the POPIA checklist cover the general position, and a security business processing client site footage should treat itself as an operator for that client's data.

What to settle before the purchase order

• Uniform design submitted to PSiRA and the colour decision received, before any stock order
• Radio power output and frequency confirmed in writing, and the ICASA licence applied for if needed
• PPE identified per post type, budgeted as a company cost, with no deduction from wages
• Firearm safe standard confirmed against the regulations, with proof of approval kept on file
• Camera retention period and access list written down before deployment
• Imported equipment checked for customs codes and any ITAC or NRCS requirement

Imported kit is its own project. Customs codes, ITAC import permits and NRCS letters of authority apply to equipment on their own terms, entirely separately from anything PSiRA or SAPS require, and the trade compliance service deals with that side.

Frequently asked questions