The day Oprah Winfrey realised that South Africa was broken

Nelson Mandela’s former chief of security, Rory Steyn, shared a story where American media mogul Oprah Winfrey expressed how broken South Africa was.

Steyn is one of the top security experts, having spent 18 years as a South African police officer and serving as President Nelson Mandela’s former chief of security.

He also served as the security liaison for the New Zealand All Blacks during the 1995 Rugby World Cup.

Steyn retired from the South African Police Service in 1999 as one of President Mandela’s protection team leaders, with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel.

He then founded the security company Nicholls Steyn and Associates with his late partner Bob Nicholls in June 1999.

The South African-based company focused on executive protection, major sports event security, and specialised security consulting.

It operates in Africa and India with a network in North and South America, Europe, the UK, Asia-Pacific and the Middle East.

The company changed its name to NSA Global Security Consultants in 2019, but remained headquartered in Johannesburg.

“For three decades, we have been trusted by Fortune 500 companies, NGOs, and private clients to deliver security solutions across South Africa and beyond,” it said.

NSA Global Security Consultants currently offers executive protection, tactical support to armed goods escorts, guarding, and security consultancy.

In 2001, Steyn published a memoir, One Step Behind Mandela: The Story of Rory Steyn, Nelson Mandela’s Chief Bodyguard, co-authored with Debora Patta.

In the memoir, he claims that the All Blacks had been poisoned before the 1995 Rugby World Cup Final.

The claim made Steyn the first high-profile South African to acknowledge any wrongdoing related to the All Blacks’ food-poisoning debacle.

Steyn shares a story about Oprah Winfrey in South Africa

Steyn delivered a keynote address at the 2026 BizNews Conference in Hermanus, where he shared a story about one of his clients, Oprah Winfrey.

He said that while driving Oprah through Sandton, Johannesburg, on Winnie Mandela Drive, they stopped at an intersection.

Steyn pointed out that the people directing traffic wearing reflective vests were actually homeless individuals acting informally without any executive authority.

This is not strange in Johannesburg. The city’s traffic light system and electricity grid are deteriorating, which causes widespread outages.

Traffic lights in Johannesburg are out so regularly that it has become commonplace for homeless people to direct traffic in the hope of getting tips.

What should be a function of the Johannesburg Metropolitan Police Department (JMPD) and SA Police Service has been taken over by homeless people.

However, there is a lack of JMPD and police officers, official traffic wardens, and authorised private pointsmen to do the work.

“Now let me speak plainly, South Africa has underinvested in police training over decades,” Steyn said during his address.

“So, I’m driving Oprah, we’re coming out of Sandton coming down that road that goes onto Winnie Mandela Drive at the robot below Saxon House,” he said.

“She’s talking to somebody in the back of the car that I’m driving. I said to her, ‘Ma’am, I’m sorry to interrupt you,’ but I said, ‘Just have a look at this here’”.

“You see these guys in this intersection here with the reflective jackets on that are directing the traffic?’ Every single one of them is a homeless person.”

Steyn explained to Winfrey that the homeless people have no executive authority to direct traffic, as they were not uniformed, qualified, and appointed officials.

“Well, her bodyguard from America sitting behind me, his neck spun around like a top, and Oprah’s not short of a word,” he said.

“She didn’t know what to say other than, ‘Man, your country is effed.'”