On 9 June 2003, 43-year-old Magadien Wentzel walked out of Pollsmoor Prison in Cape Town. Behind him lay a lifelong career in the 28s, South Africa’s most reviled prison gang, rumoured to specialise in rape and robbery.
On 9 June 2003, 43-year-old Magadien Wentzel walked out of Pollsmoor Prison in Cape Town. Behind him lay a lifelong career in the 28s, South Africa’s most reviled prison gang, rumoured to specialise in rape and robbery. Before him lay the prospect of a law-abiding future in a household of 14 people, none of whom earned a living. Jonny Steinberg met Wentzel in prison in 2002.
By the time Wentzel was released, they had spent more than 50 hours together. The Number recounts their conversations about the places and people of Wentzel’s past. This book is an account of Wentzel’s project to make sense of his past and his future. When Steinberg met him, Wentzel was on a quest to retrieve the name he had been given at birth, and to gather his estranged children into a nuclear family: an eccentric and painful venture for a man with his past, but one that led him to construct an account of himself that begs to be told.
