Inside South Africa's darkest cartels

Kyle Cowan's Mafia Land exposes South Africa's descent into corruption, where organised crime and political power have dangerously merged

- Marlan Padayachee

From apartheid to democracy, South Africa's brave journalists have stood as the conscience of the nation — truth-tellers who risked careers, reputations and even their lives to expose injustice, corruption and abuse of power. Investigative journalist Kyle Cowan has joined this progressive pantheon of fearless wordsmiths.

A two-time winner of the Taco Kuiper Award for Investigative Journalism, Cowan's latest book, Mafia Land: Inside South Africa's Darkest Cartels lays bare the rot within our democratic order.

Fellow journalist Pieter du Toit calls it “terrifying” — and with reason.

In his foreword, academic Piet Croucamp recalls the late Suna Venter’s tattooed mantra — “Were you brave?” — a question that haunts every journalist confronting power. Venter, one of the “SABC 8”, died traumatised after defying political interference in the public broadcaster. Croucamp suggests Mafia Land is Cowan’s courageous answer to that same question.

During apartheid, journalists fought censorship and propaganda, often underground or in exile, to report on racial oppression. Their courage helped mobilise both local and global resistance to the regime.

In the democratic era, a new generation — Cowan, Du Toit, Jeff Wicks, Mandy Weiner and Venter — has carried that torch, confronting the decay of the post-liberation state, a post-apartheid culture of complicity in corruption.

They have exposed the assassinations, police brutality and systemic corruption that erode public trust.

Cowan’s