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A Human Being Died That Night: A South African Woman Confronts the Legacy of Apartheid
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About A Human Being Died That Night: A South African
Product Description A Human Being Died That Night recounts an extraordinary dialogue. Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, a psychologist who grew up in a black South African township, reflects on her interviews with Eugene de Kock, the commanding officer of state-sanctioned death squads under apartheid. Gobodo-Madikizela met with de Kock in Pretoria's maximum-security prison, where he is serving a 212-year sentence for crimes against humanity. In profoundly arresting scenes, Gobodo-Madikizela conveys her struggle with contradictory internal impulses to hold him accountable and to forgive. Ultimately, as she allows us to witness de Kock's extraordinary awakening of conscience, she illuminates the ways in which the encounter compelled her to redefine the value of remorse and the limits of forgiveness. Review "A startlingly personal account...written with clarity, energy, and enormous empathy." About the Author PUMLA GOBODO-MADIKIZELA served on the Human Rights Violations Committee of South Africa’s great national experiment in healing, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. She lectures internationally on issues of reconciliation. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. 1 / Scenes from Apartheid As I drove the last half-mile of the road that leads to South Africa’s notorious Pretoria Central Prison, I felt a dread unlike any I had felt in my earlier visits. Before I could make myself ready, a huge sign high above me at the entrance announced the noble agenda: Correctional Services: Pretoria.” The reassuringly professional sign was one of many changes, I half noted, that must have been introduced by the new black director of prisons. I slowed down my car, drove up to within a few yards of the prison entrance, and turned the engine off. I sat there, seeing but not seeing the people milling around gloomily after a visit with loved ones, waiting for the taxi vans that would drive them back to the impoverished townships on the outskirts of Pretoria. My anxiety built until I felt as if it could have exploded through the windows of my car. The white guard stationed by the prison entrance was by now looking at me suspiciously. I impulsively turned on the ignition, not sure whether to move the car or, as I then decided, to get out, approach the security checkpoint, and announce myself to the guard. Anticipating that he would ask me to spell my name, I handed him my business card. He went to the telephone in his small observation room and returned to tell me that Doreen Krause, the head of the maximum security section of the prison, was expecting me. This hardly came as a relief; by now I needed something any obstacle that would give me an excuse to abandon my mission. Farther down the road I could see the massive gray concrete walls of the medium and maximum security sections of the prison. The last time I’d come here was in 1989 to interview a man on death row for killing a white farmer in the Eastern Cape. There was to be a retrial, and the prisoner’s lawyers had asked me to prepare a psychological report on him. That time I had driven straight to the prison without going through Pretoria. Pretoria was a city filled with too many of apartheid’s symbols the Union building, the seat of apartheid’s parliament, the statues of Afrikaner heroes, prison cells, and buildings of torture where many opponents of apartheid, black and white, had died or disappeared or mysteriously committed suicide. Pretoria was the heart and soul of apartheid, and I had no desire to set foot there. But now, as I returned to the prison eight years later, Pretoria symbolized something new. It was the city where Nelson Mandela had been inaugurated as the first president of a democratic South Africa. A workforce that reflected this new South Africa had replaced many of the white men and women who had been the civil servants of one of the most brutally repressive systems in modern history. This day, on my way to the Central Prison, I’d d
