While working for South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Committee, Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela interviewed former police colonel Eugene De Cock, who commanded a unit believed to have killed a number of anti-apartheid activists. De Cock was charged with, among other crimes against humanity, six murders and sentenced to 212 years in prison. A Human Being Died That Night is about the complexities of post-apartheid South Africa and sees a white man exploring his psyche with a member of the race he tried to annihilate.