Reviewed by Francis Nyamnjoh (Originally published in Pambazuka #250)
Jonny Steinberg. The Number. Cape Town: Jonathan Ball Publishers, 2004. ISBN: 1868422054
The Number very broadly articulates the democratization of South African society since the end of apartheid in 1994, and the impact of this transition on prison communities structured on the principles of apartheid and the discipline and punish logic of prisons everywhere. In the words of the author, the book demonstrates “why generations of young black men lived violent lives under apartheid, and why generations more will live violently under democracy” (p.11). Using the life of William Steenkamp/Magadien Wentzel, Steinberg demonstrates the proximity of the history of crime to the central fault lines that have shaped and continue to shape South African society.
In William Steenkamp/Magadien, Steinberg sees the sort of man he wanted to write about, especially as: “I was frightened of penning a story about hell; I wanted to find a redemptive tale, to write about someone who had journeyed to the heart of the inferno but had come out the other side.” (p.27-28). The Number thus recounts Steinberg’s and Magadien’s journey into the latter’s past (p.44) Thus informed by how William Steenkamp/Magadien Wentzel has come to understand his own past and why”, The Number, a highly researched book rich in prison ethnography and organizational sociology, is as much about history as it is about memory. Two themes have caught my attention: (a) democratization and (b) identity.
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