A country is policed only to the extent that it consents to be.
When that consent is withheld, cops either negotiate or withdraw.
Once they do this, however, they are no longer police; their role
becomes something far murkier. Several months before they exploded
into xenophobic violence, Jonny Steinberg travelled the streets of
Alexandra, Reiger Park and other Johannesburg townships with police
patrols. His mission was to discover the unwritten rules of
engagement emerging between South Africa's citizens and its new
police force. In this provocative new book, Steinberg argues that
policing in crowded urban space is like theatre. Only here, the
audience writes the script, and if the police don't perform the
right lines, the spectators throw them off the stage. In vivid and
eloquent prose, Steinberg takes us into the heart of this drama, and
picks apart the rules South Africans have established for the
policing of their communities. What emerges is a lucid and original
account of a much larger matter: the relationship between ordinary
South Africans and the government they have elected to rule them.
The government and its people are like scorned lovers, Steinberg
argues: their relationship, brittle, moody, untrusting and
ultimately very needy.
