IT IS surely the SA nightmare. Marauding mobs, looting, raping and killing. The police, military and emergency services stretched to breaking point. Roads torn up, barricades, petrol bombs and arson.However, this is not Cape Town, Johannesburg, Durban or some other SA city in crisis in some dystopian moment in the future. These are the Los Angeles riots of 1992, when law and order collapsed completely for almost a week, to inspire Gattis’s powerful fictionalised account a full 23 years later.The immediate trigger of the riots was the acquittal of four white police officers after an attack on a black man, Rodney King, in the wake of one of the most notorious racially charged trials in American history.Following a high-speed car chase through Los Angeles after police had tried to stop him for erratic driving, King was eventually cornered by them.He was then savagely beaten while supposedly resisting arrest, to be hospitalised with skull fractures, brain damage, broken bones and smashe...
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