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Thin Blue by Jonny Steinberg

Thin Blue by Jonny Steinberg

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The Unwritten Rules of Policing South Africa
183 pages, Paperback
20cm x 13cm (B-Format)
Goodreads Rating: 3.86 * 81 ratings * 9 reviews

Genres: Nonfiction/Africa/South Africa/True Crime

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. 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 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 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 their relationship, brittle, moody, untrusting and ultimately very needy.
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