The Number

In front of him lay the prospect of a law-abiding future, and life in a household of ten adults and eight children, none of whom earned a living. Author Jonny Steinberg met Wentzel in prison in 2002. By the time of Wentzel's release, he and Steinberg had spent more than 50 hours discussing his life experiences. The number is an account of their conversations and of SteinbergAs journeys to the places and people of Wentzel's past. He had lived a bewilderingly schizophrenic life, wandering to and fro between three worlds: the arcane universe of prison gangs, steeped in a mythology of banditry and retribution, where he was known as JR; the margins of South Africa's criminal economy, where he lived by a string of stolen names and learnt the arts of commercial fraud; and his scattered family, which eked out a living in the coloured ghettos of the Cape Flats. The number visits each of those worlds in turn. It is a tale of modern South Africa's historic events seen through the eyes of the country's most marginal citizens. Surprisingly, perhaps, it is neither a story of passivity nor despair, but of beguiling ingenuity and cool cynicism.