The Untouchables: Drug lords, dirty cops, and South Africa’s darkest secrets (2026, Maverick451)
This book is available in South Africa on Daily Maverick’s online shop here and in most bookstores.
For most South Africans, the Madlanga Commission of Inquiry has felt like watching a single scandal unfold.
For investigative journalist Caryn Dolley, it’s the latest chapter in a story she has spent more than 20 years – and no shortage of personal risk – pursuing.
The result is The Untouchables: Drug Lords, Dirty Cops, and South Africa’s Darkest Secrets: the A to Z of organised crime in South Africa, dang-near every name and how they’re connected, told with the pace of a thriller and the grit of two decades on the hardest beat in the country.
Award-winning Daily Maverick journalist Caryn Dolley has spent years tracing the footprints of cops, gangs and kingpins in South Africa and across the world. Through examining police investigations, delving into court documents, interviews with countless sources, and painstakingly tracking arrests, she pieces together a horrific puzzle showing how different criminal empires have overlapped, merged and clashed in South Africa.
The Untouchables is her fifth book. She has published four books to great public and critical acclaim: Man Alone: Mandela’s top cop – exposing South Africa’s ceaseless sabotage in 2024, Clash of the Cartels: Unmasking the global drug kingpins stalking South Africa in 2022, To The Wolves: How traitor cops crafted South Africa’s underworld in 2021 and The Enforcers: Inside Cape Town’s deadly nightclub battles in 2019.