The Dirty Work of Democracy: A year on the streets with the SAPS, by Antony Altbeker (used)

What does it take to police South Africa's streets? This is the question Antony Altbeker sets out to answer in The Dirty Work of Democracy, an account of the year he spent observing South Africa's police in action across the country.

He spent twelve months with scores of officers working in police stations stretching from the foothills of the Maluti mountains in the old Transkei to the ganglands that surround the Mother City, from the oak-lined streets of Rosebank to the pot-holed tracks of Ivory Park.

Murder, armed robbery, gangsterism and domestic violence: this is a fly-on-the-wall account of how street-level policing works and why it often doesn't. It offers unique insight into the men and women behind the badge and into the world they confront every shift.

Cops are loved and hated, praised and blamed, in equal measure. They experience our country as nobody else does, and see more pain and sadness in a day than many do in a lifetime. Altbeker takes us inside this unique and strange profession, and reports on it with both empathy and reflective distance.

Condition: good