A Human Being Died That Night: Confronting Apartheid's Chief Killer

When Eugene de Kock, commanding officer of South Africa’s illicit death squads, was sentenced to 212 years for crimes against humanity, the black South Africans outside Pretoria’s supreme court cheered and danced: the killer would stay behind bars until the day he died. But one woman, plagued by awkward questions about the nature of vengeance and forgiveness, decided to look into the monster’s heart and found a man in many ways worthy of pardon and freedom. During many hours of conversation, de Kock and Gobodo-Madikezela, a trained clinical psychologist, take a remarkable shared journey into what it means to be human.