Blood, Blades and Bullets: Anatomy of a Glebelands hitman, by Nathi Olifant

Mazwi Nxumalo is a naïve school dropout teenager from rural Nongoma who is unwittingly recruited into the dark world of Glebelands hostel hitmen. Coming from a poverty-stricken family, the odds are stacked against him. He is also running away from a mysterious man and his goons that he busted executing a man in a local forest.After getting in tune with the ways of the Durban taxi ranks and industry, he is soon trained in shooting, surprisingly by rogue cop friends of his handler, Zenzele. He returns one more time to Nongoma where, in a rage, kills his friend, former schoolmate and striking partner in the local football team after learning he had impregnated his high school sweetheart.Angry at his protégé and fearing that he would soon be out of control, Zenzele decides it’s time for the traditional cleansing and strengthening ceremony, ukuthwala.

Mazwi emerges almost invincible from this rite of passage to become an unstoppable but flawed killing machine.As the bodies pile up, including of those cops investigating his crimes, so is his irrepressible obsession with his doctored bullets and one woman whom his handlers believe will be his Achilles heel.The death of his father reveals more shocks around the young man’s recruitment into contract killing and he would take everyone with him on his menacing rollercoaster ride.