From 1948 to 1994 South Africa was governed by Europeans using an apartheid system. The apartheid system segregates people by race. Forcing any non-white people’s in to sovereign nation type situations and stripping them of their right to vote. These sovereign nations are sort of similar to Indian Reservations in the United States. America began relocating Indian Americans almost 100 years earlier in 1851 when congress passed the Indian Appropriation Act. Non-European people in South Africa were treated similarly. It wasn’t until Nelson Mandela was empowered in 1994 that the segregation was eliminated in. Mandela worked tirelessly to abolish the oppression of the African people. He remained as President of South Africa until 1999 when he retired.

The beginning of Pumla Gobodo Madikizela’s book, A Human Being Died That Night, opens with a scene in Pretoria, South Africa. Pumla is on business trip to a prison in order to interview one of the most sadistic men in the country’s history, Eugene de Kock. A man referred to as “Prime Evil”. On page six Pumla describes him as “the surest evidence of all that happened under apartheid” and goes on to recall three vivid events in her past. One depicts the oppression of South Africans, another describes a horrific police intervention at a rally and finally she describes her participation in the killing of a human being. Madikizela tells the stories to establish her upbringing under the apartheid.

In the second chapter Pumla asks the question “Was evil intrinsic to de Kock, and forgiveness therefore wasted on him?”(p.15). She asked this question after speaking with the widows of victims from a horrific car bombing de Kock had masterminded. The widows were seemingly empathetic to the “loss of de Kock’s moral humanity” (p.15) and Pumla posed the question of his worthiness. If this man was part of a terrible regime that has murdered and exploited the African people, does he really deserve any shred of forgiveness? Madikizela is clearly taken back by the compassion of the women towards their husbands’ killer, especially considering the author’s past under apartheid rule. How could a man murder several people and feel no remorse, while the loved ones of the dead pray for him?

The main message I got from the second chapter this far is that the book is about remorse and forgiveness after terrible wrong doings. How people can forgive their enemies for serious atrocities is something I can’t easily understand. I personally would hold an eternal grudge against someone for doing those things and would prefer to have them dead. Still I’m interested in the book and look forward to reading more into it. The research I did on the apartheid in Africa was especially interesting.

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