One of the largest ‘industries’ in present day South Africa, is the burgeoning, all-encompassing Security business – a vast collection of quasi-military organisations, entrusted with ‘24/7’ armed-response protection of private premises, corporate institutions, as well as domestic properties of the public at large.
Among the myriad security firms that monitor the city streets across the country, we find a motley crew in the Southern Suburbs of Jo’burg that goes by the name – Rimbaugh Security.
Stoffel Rimbaugh is the ageing, tired-of-life founder of the firm . Having set up his security operation in the days when a couple of cars and two or three hired hands constituted what can only be described as a glorified ‘neighbourhood watch’, this civic-minded ex-policeman has seen the ‘posers’ of the industry come and go. And then come again… bigger and better and more organised. So what? Not for Stoffel the flashy cars and fancy computers, the laser beams and hi-tech surveillance devices utilised by the so-called ‘professional’
security outfits. He maintains his tiny pool of cars himself – a closet mechanic, tinkering away in the workshop behind his office for hours on end. The sixty year-old, with his small ‘hands on’ team, is hanging in there… but only just. Time and technology is catching up with Rimbaugh Security, and the days of ‘The Rainbow Boys’ may well be over… or are they…?
