"We are concerned," he said, "and we are talking to the companies about what action we should take," he said.
Alec Erwin, South Africa's trade minister, thinks there are other ways to meet national security concerns, a spokesman said, and he will take up the matter this week with the minister of safety and security, who backs the foreign-ownership ban.
Representatives of ADT and Securicor did not return calls seeking comment.South Africa's private security business is one of the few bright lights in an economy that, while stable, has yet to produce the kind of growth the country needs to deal with huge, deeply entrenched income inequality -- a legacy of apartheid.
With violent crime increasingly spreading to affluent white neighborhoods, demand for armed patrols has surged. The thick walls and high gates that ring many houses in Johannesburg are almost invariably emblazoned with the signs of private-security companies.
This year, Credit Suisse First Boston estimated the size of the country's security industry at US$1.2 billion at current exchange rates and found that spending on security, as a percentage of gross domestic product, was 1.25 percent, the highest in the world.
While demand is projected to slow some, the introduction of new technologies, in particular the integration of fire and medical protection into security packages, has been seen as one of the keys to sustaining growth.
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