The Street: Exposing A World Of Cops Bribes And Drug Dealers - Paul Mcnally

There are no villains here. Award-winning journalist Paul McNally finds corrupt cops, drug dealers, vigilante residents, addicts, torturers, murderers and cops partnered with drug dealers. But no villains. 

Raymond is a shop owner on Ontdekkers Road, in Johannesburg, who takes a baseball bat to the dealers when they break his rules. He systematically records in his notebook the police officers who come all day, every day to collect their bribe money from the dealers, and is looking for someone to trust. Khaba is a middle-aged police officer who wants a quiet life but whose demons will not leave him in peace. He is trying to regain his trust in what he once regarded as an honourable profession. Wendy is a petite, ageing police reservist who can handle an R5 rifle with confidence, but not the sadness that accompanies her in her daily life the loss of her police officer husband, brutally murdered by a drug lord, and the addiction that has her adult son in its grip. She is looking for respect and affirmation and for her own life to have meaning.

Through different paths, the lives of Raymond, Khaba and Wendy intersect on the street as their attention is focused on the current power couple a drug dealer named Obi and Lerato, a police officer. Seemingly untouchable, Obi and Lerato terrorise Ontdekkers, and in the process upset the balance of this already lawless world.

Published September 2016, Paperback, 323 pages.

About the Author:

Paul McNally is a journalist living in Johannesburg. He is the founding director of The Citizen Justice Network, an award-winning media initiative that develops journalism in under-reported areas in local languages. McNally produces feature articles and narrative radio documentaries for Wits Journalism on criminal justice, health and science. He is a 2016 Knight Visiting Nieman Fellow at Harvard. This is his first book.