Hitmen for Hire: Exposing South Africa's Underworld

Published by Jonathan Ball Publishers, 2017, softcover, index, 262 pages, condition: new.

When you next sit down at your local coffee shop, look around there may just be a professional hitman sitting at the next table. As author Mark Shaw reveals in this highly original and informative book, the 'upper world' sails perilously close to the underworld. HITMEN FOR HIRE takes the reader on a journey like no other, navigating a world of hammermen (hitmen), informers, rogue policemen, taxi bosses, gang leaders and crooked businessmen. The book examines a system in which contract killings have become the norm, looking at who arranges hits, where to find a hitman, and even what it is like to be a hitman - or woman. Since 1994, South Africa has witnessed some spectacular underworld killings associated with various industries and sectors. Drawing on over a thousand cases, from 2000 to 2016, Shaw reveals how these murders have an outsized impact on the evolution of both legal and illegal economic activity.

Mark Shaws Hitmen for Hire Exposing South Africas Underworld, is a well written and illuminating book. As a South African, I read these kinds of books for a variety of reasons. I am fascinated by crime, in general, and have a deep interest in the aberrant human mind. I also attempt to make sense of the complexities and anomalies of our country. 23 years on from apartheid we certainly are a wild, violent, peculiar state but Shaw has our devolution clearly mapped out and educates his readers about it in a way that is neither academic or dry.

The authors credentials are impressive. He understands organised crime on a global level. One would need to as a visiting fellow at London School of Economics and an adjunct professor at the University of Cape. This academic is no slouch and is able, due to his experiences, to draw parallels in the SA context to many countries such as the Mafia in Italy and rouges in the post-Soviet states. It is actually all about weakened states in the process of transformation that can, due to the political climate, become hothouses for hired killers or what he refers to as entrepreneurs of violence.

Hitmen for Hire focuses on various branches of the underworld that established themselves as major criminal players and utilise the services of hired assassins for various reasons. These include the informal and largely unregulated taxi industry, bouncers and enforces of the night club and adult entertainment industry, Cape Flats gangsters and the Nigerians (who have infiltrated the drug trade). The insights gleaned into our police force leaves the reader feeling less than cheered but at least the alarming decline of law and order it makes more sense.