In Mafia Land: Inside South Africa’s Darkest Cartels, multi-award-winning journalist Kyle Cowan rips open the terrifying truth about organised crime.

South Africa’s cartels are ruthless in their ambition, relentless in their reach and devastating in their plunder of this nation.

This is not politics-as-usual. It is the rise of a shadow state, where organised crime has seeped into every crack of power.

Out on 28 September 2025 from Penguin Random House SA.

• PRE-ORDER today to secure your copy of the investigation that will shake South Africa to its core!

About the book

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 12 of the country’s most dangerous cartels, and how they will stop at nothing in their deadly, devastating plunder of our country.

Categories Non-fiction South Africa South African Current Affairs

Tags Kyle Cowan Mafia Land New books New releases Penguin Random House SA