When a novel lands right in the middle of a national corruption probe, it ceases to be mere fiction and becomes part of a much larger conversation about power.
Jackie Phamotse’s latest book, "The Big Five Cartel", arrives precisely as South Africa confronts harrowing revelations about organised crime, state capture, and institutional rot.
By exploring the deep web connecting money, politics, and impunity, Phamotse challenges readers to face an uncomfortable reality: crime is no longer just operating on the streets - it has moved into the corridors of state power.
The book has gained attention against the backdrop of the Madlanga Commission of Inquiry and revelations about alleged criminal networks operating across business, law enforcement and political circles.
For Phamotse, the timing is significant.
She told “The National" that she did not write the book to entertain readers but to document what she believes are deeper connections between power, money and impunity.
“I wrote ‘The Big Five Cartel’ because silence is complicity,” she said.
“I have been writing about corruption since 2017, and that hasn't changed. What we heard from Lieutenant General Dumisani Khumalo on September 29, 2025 is exactly what I spent most of my academic life researching.”
Where fiction meets a political reality
Phamotse argues that South Africans need to look beyond the conventional image of organised crime.
“We keep thinking crime is outside the state. It's not. It IS the state,” she said.
She believes that the country is dealing with something more complex than street-level criminality. In her view, organised crime can survive when networks develop relationships with people who have access to institutions, information and political influence.
Her comments intersect with some of the issues raised during the Madlanga Commission, which has examined allegations involving criminal networks and their links to law enforcement and other spheres of power.
Phamotse said the commission's revelations reminded her of themes she had already explored in her work.
“My job is simple, document these facts in a story so that it's recorded for South Africans,” she said.
That distinction is important. The commission is an official inquiry dealing with evidence and allegations under its own processes. Phamotse's book is a work of storytelling informed, she said, by research and primary sources. The two should not be treated as interchangeable.
Yet their proximity has created a powerful conversation.
The president, power and protection
Phamotse's comments have also extended beyond organised crime to the political environment in which powerful networks allegedly operate.
During her recent guest appearance on the “SMWX” podcast, she discussed the relationship between political connections, extreme wealth and organised crime. She argued that criminal networks can depend on political and institutional protection to operate successfully.
For Phamotse, the bigger issue is not simply who holds political office. It is whether institutions designed to protect the public can themselves become vulnerable to influence.
“We need bravery to confront the truth,” she said.
Her argument is deliberately uncomfortable: organised crime, she believes, should not be viewed as a problem operating somewhere outside the centres of power.
She pointed to alleged links between drug trafficking, cash in transit robberies, ATM bombings and government contracts as examples of how criminal enterprises can diversify when one source of income becomes less profitable.
The women behind the men
Perhaps one of the more provocative themes in Phamotse's commentary is her focus on women who operate around powerful men accused or implicated in criminal activity.
She argued that public discussions often reduce these women to girlfriends, wives or victims while overlooking the possibility that some may occupy strategic positions within networks.
“Because patriarchy is convenient for the cartel,” she said.
“Everyone wants to see the women as the clueless girlfriend, the victim, the blesser's baby mama. No one wants to see her as the CFO, the logistics manager, the one who registers the companies, launders the money, enforces loyalty.”
Her comments come amid public scrutiny of people connected to controversial businessman Vusimuzi “Cat” Matlala. Tsakani Matlala has faced allegations and legal proceedings that have placed her in the public spotlight.
But this is where the conversation requires care. Allegations, charges and public commentary do not establish guilt. The broader question raised by Phamotse is about whether society sometimes fails to recognise women's agency when discussing criminal networks.
She argued that her work attempts to bring those women into the frame.
“Everyone talks about ‘Cat’ Matlala, Brown Mogotsi, the ‘Big Five’ men. No one talks about the educated, strategic women who keep the machine running,” she said.
A book designed to make readers uncomfortable
Phamotse is under no illusion that “The Big Five Cartel” will be universally welcomed.
In an open letter about the book, she described herself as a writer and scholar who chose documentation over silence. She also referred to the personal consequences that she said she has faced for speaking publicly about controversial issues.
“The cost of documentation is real. But the cost of silence is greater,” she wrote.
She said the book is based on months of research, primary sources and evidence. Those claims are part of her own account of the work and should be considered alongside the wider legal and political context surrounding the issues she raises.
The question now is whether readers will view the book as a warning, a work of fiction shaped by contemporary events or an intervention in South Africa's political conversation.
For Phamotse, the answer is clear.
“Are we ready? No. But we have to be. Our country is in trouble.”
That may be the real reason “The Big Five Cartel” has generated attention. It asks readers to consider not only what organised crime looks like but where power ends, and criminal influence begins.
And in a country watching the Madlanga Commission unfold, those are questions that extend well beyond the pages of a book.
lutho.pasiya@nationalmg.co.za