[animal531]

I'll counter this as another white South African male and say that no one globally is portraying South African white men as any kind of new bogeyman.

After the fall of apartheid the new democratically voted for (black) government came into power, meaning that the old government, military, police, municipalities etc. faced pressure in replacing all the previous white employees with new black employees.

That meant that those white people needed to start finding new jobs. For your general office worker from a municipality or a low level policeman that meant transitioning to something else, such as generic office job, learning new skills such as using computers etc.

But for your extreme specialists, for example from the Army Special Task Force, they often had advanced training and skills which they didn't want to trade for an entry level position somewhere. That meant translating those skills into something new, such as (mainly) local security companies (to combat the new rise in crime in the country); but also as contractors such as named in the article.

Even the article itself isn't focused on condemning the individual contractors, it's merely stating that the creation of these private armies are raising hard questions around their use, liability and who they need to be accountable to.