To The Wolves: How Traitor Cops Crafted South Africa’s Underworld (2021, Maverick451)
To The Wolves: How Traitor Cops Crafted South Africa’s Underworld was published in June 2021.
It debuted at number one on the South African non-fiction bestseller list.
In April 2022 Maverick 451 announced it sold the option rights for the book, stating in part: “Maverick 451 is delighted to announce that Cape Town- and London-based production company Spier Films has optioned To The Wolves by Caryn Dolley. Spier intends creating a fictionalised series based on Dolley’s extraordinary account of cop collusion and gang warfare at the heart of Cape Town’s criminal underworld.”
To The Wolves is available for purchase via several platforms including the Daily Maverick online store here, Exclusive Books stores, The Book Lounge, and Amazon.
Read an extract here.
‘Cops and Robbers: we think we know how to tell the good guys from the bad, but when it comes to Cape Town’s crime scene, things are anything but clear cut. Controlled by gangs, fuelled by drugs and policed by cops that, all too often, get caught on the wrong side of the action.
Among the Cape Town cops who have consistently claimed that colleagues are trying to pin crimes on them are Major General Andre Lincoln (former head of a national police unit mandated by Nelson Mandela), Major General Jeremy Vearey (known as SA’s top gang buster) and Lieutenant Colonel Charl Kinnear (who was investigating some of the country’s most brutal underworld crimes when he was assassinated in September 2020). Colleagues and suspects alike pointed to all three as colluding with criminals. Who is telling the truth?
Journalist Caryn Dolley has tracked this tangled trail, following the corruption breadcrumbs, sifting through court documents, laying fact upon fact and exposing the depths and breadth of systemic corruption that was set in place during apartheid and has only become more entrenched during the first decades of our democracy. She has traced the rot from cops to underworld to politicians and back, exposing duplicitous networks that have for decades ensnared South Africa in an expanding cycle of organised crime and cop claim crossfire. At the centre of this crisis is the mounting collateral: the victims of Cape Town’s manufactured killing fields.
To The Wolves tells the true-life story of how South Africa’s underworld came to be, what continues to fuel it today and how the deception and lies go all the way to the top…’
Read an in-depth review of To The Wolves on New Frame here.
eNCA interview on gang violence, allegations of corrupt policing, and interlinks.
Read on Daily Maverick The crooked blue line: Dodgy cops still work with gangsters, as they did during apartheid
Listen to an in-depth interview conducted by Chad Thomas on Chai Fm about To The Wolves.
Listen to Mandy Wiener interview Caryn about To The Wolves.
Listen to Lester Kiewit chat with Caryn about the book.
