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. Even the police mafia.

Each one feeds off a vast web of patronage and extraction that stretches from street level to the highest echelons of government. Their bloodsucking 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 the country’s most dangerous cartels, and how they will stop at nothing in their deadly, devastating plunder of our country.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kyle Cowan is an award-winning journalist. He was twice named joint winner of the prestigious Taco Kuiper Award for investigative journalism and works at News24 as part of their in-depth investigative team.

'Mafia Land: Inside South Africa's Darkest Cartels' is published by Penguin Random House South Africa