A Human Being Died That Night

by Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela

This is a complicated and moving book about the nature of good and evil. Pumla is a South African psychologist who spent a lot of time in prison interviewing people like Eugene de Kock, the commanding officer of state-sanctioned apartheid death squads. He is currently serving 212 years in jail for crimes against humanity. He directed ‘the blood, the bodies and the killing’ against apartheid’s enemies. She walks us through her recognition ‘that good and evil exist in our lives and that evil, like good, is always a possibility’.