Johan Raath is a senior high-threat security, military-training and protection professional with four decades of combined military and private-sector experience.
He served for seven years in 1 South African Special Forces Regiment, first as an operator and team medic and later as an instructor at the Special Forces Training Wing. He qualified in formal military instructional methodology and advanced urban operations, presenting and developing specialist training in guerrilla and unconventional warfare, urban warfare and CQB, VIP protection, tactical weapons and advanced driving.
After leaving the South African Defence Force in 1992 at the rank of Staff Sergeant, Johan founded a specialist tactical training and security consultancy business. He trained military, Presidential Protection and private-security personnel, and undertook high-risk Presidential and VIP protection assignments in Africa and the Caribbean. His work has also included aviation security, crisis extraction, emergency evacuation planning, maritime counter-piracy concepts and intelligence-led threat assessment.
His operational, training and advisory experience extends across Africa, the Middle East and the Caribbean, including Angola, Namibia, Mozambique, Madagascar, Southern Sudan, Eritrea, Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, Libya, Tunisia, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Between 2004 and 2017 he spent more than a decade deployed on the ground in Iraq. He progressed through PSD team leader, site and country security management, senior project management and national operations roles, supporting reconstruction, oil-field and port-infrastructure projects. Historical assignments included responsibility for security across ten reconstruction sites, more than US$100 million in project assets, over 100 expatriate security officers, more than 500 local-national guards and approximately 200 Georgian security personnel.
Since May 2023, Johan has managed the Security Operations Center supporting the TotalEnergies Mozambique LNG project at Afungi in Cabo Delgado. His work includes surveillance and incident monitoring, communications, movement and convoy tracking, intelligence and threat reporting, and emergency-response coordination in an active insurgency-threat environment.
Alongside his operational career, Johan is a published non-fiction author and lecturer. Blood Money examines private military contracting in Iraq; A Breed Apart recounts South African Special Forces selection, training and service; and Blood, Money & Gas, currently in progress, addresses the insurgency and gas-security environment of northern Mozambique.
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