To The Wolves

by Caryn Dolley

Cops and 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 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...

Kindle Edition

Published July 14, 2021

Reviews

[Elroy · Rating 3 out of 5]

First time reading Caryn Dolley….struggled to read her work at first. Factual, well-researched and informative yes!

Evoking moral outrage and anger …..mmmeh - the last 3-4 pages where it all comes together - it’s a bit too late. Somehow the people this book was for me perhaps to dispassionate.

Somewhat disappointed - proves who are good cops and who are not - too convoluted in trying to be impartial?

[Yoni Bass · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dolley probably knows more about organized crime in Cape Town than anyone else. A stronger editor would have shaped this into a more compelling book. That being said the information about cop corruption in the Western Cape is all there, if not sometimes duplicated unnecessarily and hard to clearly follow, and it makes for a despairing read.