Investigative journalist Caryn Dolley CAPE TOWN, 15 JULY 2026 – Maverick 451, the publishing division of Daily Maverick, today announces the publication of The Untouchables: Drug Lords, Dirty Cops, and South Africa’s Darkest Secrets by award-winning investigative journalist Caryn Dolley, due for release on 17 August 2026.
The book arrives at a moment of acute national urgency. The Madlanga Commission of Inquiry – the most significant criminal justice reckoning in South Africa’s post-apartheid history – is preparing to wrap up its hearings and conclude later this year. Arrests are continuing in real time. A suspended national police commissioner faces criminal charges. A police minister has been sidelined over alleged cartel connections. More than R300-million in cocaine has disappeared from state custody.
Caryn Dolley has been documenting the networks at the centre of these events for more than 20 years.
The Untouchables is her fifth book and her most explosive: a definitive account of the drug trafficking network active in South Africa since before democracy, with reach into India, Dubai, Kenya, Zambia, the UK and the United States. It traces the network’s origins from apartheid-era Mandrax laboratories through the liberation Struggle and into democratic South Africa’s courts, Parliament and police stations. It names the figures who have never been prosecuted. It maps the architecture of a criminal state hiding in plain sight.
“South Africa is in serious trouble because certain politicians and police officers don’t seem to have a problem colluding with and profiting from drug kingpins – choosing fast, illegal money over honest work,” Dolley writes. “This moral erosion explains how the illicit drug scene in post-apartheid South Africa didn’t just develop into what it is today: a wild, salivating beast. Colluders have reared it, fed it, trained it. They still do.”
The book argues something that reframes the State Capture narrative South Africans thought they understood: that narco money and narco networks ran through the connective tissue of post-apartheid capture all along. The Guptas are a chapter in a longer story. The cartel – and how it connects street-level gang activity to the highest echelons of power – is the story.
It’s the discipline and the danger of the craft of journalism Dolley has practised for 20 years that has made this comprehensive picture possible: cross-checking sources, chasing paper trails, refusing to print a name until it was pinned down, and going head to head with unsavoury characters despite the threats lodged against her.
The Untouchables is available for pre-order now from Daily Maverick. Shipping from 17 August 2026.
About the Author
Caryn Dolley is an award-winning investigative journalist based in South Africa who has spent roughly two decades reporting on organised crime. She is the author of four previous books: The Enforcers, To the Wolves, Clash of the Cartels and Man Alone. Her reporting has shaped investigations and affected prosecutions across South Africa’s criminal justice landscape. The Untouchables is her fifth book.
About Maverick 451
Maverick 451 is the book publishing division of Daily Maverick, South Africa’s leading independent news organisation. It publishes investigative non-fiction, journalism, and current affairs titles of national significance.
Publication Details
- Title: The Untouchables: Drug Lords, Dirty Cops, and South Africa’s Darkest Secrets
- Author: Caryn Dolley
- Publisher: Maverick 451 / Daily Maverick Books
- Publication date: 15 August 2026
- Format: Softcover | approx. 300pp | 235mm x 155mm
- RRP: R340
- ISBN: 978-1-0483-0541-8
- E-ISBN: 978-1-0483-2035-0
- Distribution: Southern Africa via Protea Distribution (orders@proteadistribution.co.za)
Launch Events
- 22 July 2026 – Webinar: Exclusive First Look. Caryn Dolley in conversation with multi-award-winning political commentators Conrad Koch and Chester Missing. RSVP here.
- 19 August 2026 – Cape Town (official launch). Caryn Dolley in conversation with Marianne Thamm, at The Watershed, V&A Waterfront. Ticketed event. Indicate interest to attend here.
- 20 August 2026 – Gqeberha. Caryn Dolley in conversation with Estelle Ellis, at Exclusive Books, Walmer Park. Free event. RSVP here.
- 25 August 2026 – Johannesburg. Caryn Dolley in conversation with Ferial Haffajee, at Exclusive Books, Rosebank. Free event. RSVP here.
Interview Requests & Review Copies
Caryn Dolley is available for interviews. Advance review copies (watermarked PDF) are available to credentialled journalists and literary editors on request.
Press contact: Ingrid Sinclair, Head of Growth: Daily Maverick | Publisher: Maverick 451 ingrid@dailymaverick.co.za
About The Untouchables
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EVERY NAME. EVERY CONNECTION.
South Africa came to a standstill in July 2025 when KwaZulu-Natal police boss Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi put organised crime infiltration on record – and a bomb went off in law enforcement. Whatever his motives, what followed moved faster than anything South Africa’s criminal justice system had seen in decades.
Caryn Dolley watched without surprise.
The Untouchables is a journalist’s life work vindicated in real time: organised crime at an unbelievable scale, criminals who co-opted police and gutted the institutions meant to stop them. But this cartel is not new. Its predecessors built up the Mandrax routes that the apartheid state manufactured, that the liberation Struggle used, and that democracy never dismantled.
The cast of characters in this book covers them all – alleged cartel members, accused cops, indicted politicians, and enablers across the private sector and security industry. From a Mandrax mastermind who rubbed shoulders with political heavyweights and a sharp-tongued businessman with a love of money now facing criminal charges, to gang bosses killed before they could talk.
These names were not secrets. Dolley knew them. Her sources knew them. The police knew them. The politicians knew them.
For years, they moved through the system with an invisible shield – not hiding, not particularly careful, just somehow immune to consequence. Untouchable.
Until now.
The Untouchables is available for pre-order now from Daily Maverick. Shipping from 17 August 2026.