MAFIA LAND - Inside South Africa’s darkest cartels
by Kyle Cowan | Published by Penguin Random House
Behind the façade of South Africa lies a brutal shadow-world ruled by mafias, cartels, and crime syndicates locked in a ruthless war over South Africa’s riches. There’s the tobacco mafia. The water tanker mafia. The taxi mafia. The hospital mafia. The construction mafia. The kidnapping mafia. Many more.
Each one feeds off a vast web of patronage and extraction that stretches from the streets to the highest echelons of government. Their tentacles reach deep into municipalities, state-owned enterprises, political parties, the police, and even the National Prosecuting Authority. Those who resist them are silenced in cold blood.
This is not a criminal underworld lurking in the shadows. It is part of the system itself. Where does organised crime end and the state begin? Are the two so intertwined that it has become near impossible to distinguish the one from the other? Has South Africa become a mafia state?
Multi-award-winning investigative journalist Kyle Cowan sets out to answer these and other questions, revealing the dark underbelly of a country where the thin blue line has all but disappeared.
Mafia Land is the hair-raising tale of twelve of South Africa’s most dangerous cartels, and how they will stop at nothing in their deadly, devastating plunder of our country.
Two-time winner of the prestigious Taco Kuiper Award, Kyle Cowan is one of South Africa’s most acclaimed investigative journalists. His fearless exposés of corruption at the highest levels of power have earned him many other journalistic accolades. He is also the author of Sabotage: Eskom Under Siege.
Mafia Land is his second book.
