BBC Africa Eye Documentary: The Apartheid Killer
Content warning: apartheid, racism, trauma, violence, murder, mental disorder, psychopathy, corruption.
Spoiler alert: There are two things in the post which I would consider spoilers of 'plot twists' in the documentary.
Always a pleasure to find that the BBC, which frankly really doesn't produce much that is that good here any more, and is heavily biased, is still capable elsewhere of producing some bloody good television. I have posted before about the techniques used in documentaries and expressed appreciation of the technique of just putting an absolute monster in front of the camera and letting them speak. This documentary seems to use that technique but develops it further with commentary and insight. I have also commented before about my early interest in apartheid, since as a theology student in the absolute dying days of apartheid I wrote an essay about the theology which underpinned apartheid. This documentary is about events under the apartheid regime and the ongoing effects on life in South Africa.
In fact I think I can say that I may have a unique take on this show because of my additional qualification as a former mental health professional. If you have ever heard about real conscienceless, emotionless psychopathy and been sceptical, watch this show and be sceptical no more. The subject of the documentary is Louis van Schoor (1951 ro 2024) a former apartheid-era South African policeman and security worker, who went to prison after the apartheid regime fell, for his multiple murders.
The documentary starts by putting him in front of the camera, as I said, and honestly it's chilling. He has no conscience. He describes feeling nothing at all. He blames everyone else. He says how the police never told him to stop. He says that it was ok because his killings were all ruled justifiable homicide. He has no guilt. He has literally no conscience about what he did, no sense of personal responsibility that he himself might be in some way responsible for independently killing so many people when they weren't even trying to kill him. He says that most of the crime committed in South Africa is by Blacks (of course it would be, most of the population is Black). He casually comments on a road in East London that you are now certain to be mugged because of all the Blacks in the street. He says that he has been scapegoated.
This is where the documentary is the most difficult viewing there is. It is abundantly clear that the entire police force and others were at least allowing the killings and thus complicit. Ironically there is a sense in which Van Schoor was genuinely scapegoated while all the police officers who covered up have gone scott free. We see the usual pictures of missing evidence and so on. The question of trauma and the ongoing effects of the abusive regime are not shied away from in any way. How do you live in a community where you have either suffered from crime or have benefitted from it? Van Schoor's total psychopathy is a sort of image of what that society would look like.
The documentary is by journalist and filmmaker Isa Jacobson, who has spent twenty years investigating Van Schoor's crimes. and individual victims' families in trying to get closure, if not anything like justice. I remember watching a couple of sessions of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and wondering how you could ever 'get over' the events described, if you ever could. It's abundantly clear from this documentary that you don't.
I commented that there are a couple of plot twists in the documentary. One concerns Van Schoor, who describes retiring from 'security' and buying a smallholding, going to the police station after being arrested and coming home to find that his smallholding had been petrol bombed and there was nothing left. In a twist he describes the polcie investigating this crime and not finding the culprit. Ironically of course so many people probably had it in for him that he would have had difficulty naming just one, but this is a clear depiction of systemic crime and corruption coming back to bite one of its perpetrators, while also providing no solution to the bigger problems.
The other plot twist is enough to give you whip lash. The documentary I think rightly keeps this for half way through when you're some minutes away from the initial shocks of hearing a complete psychopath describe his crimes. It comes in an interview with Van Schoor's daughter in which she talks about hiring a hit man to kill her own mother (Van Schoor's ex wife) simply for having black friends and being sent to prison for this. THE SAME PRISON HER FATHER WAS IN. She is an interesting contrast with her father because she does describe feeling sorry for what she had done, but still describes the family as cursed, which seems a funny way to describe your father and your own actions.
I only have two possible criticisms: one is that while the subject of the documentary is clearly Van Schoor, it is also very much about the ongoing effects of the trauma of the apartheid period in South Africa and I wonder whether an alternative title would have better reflected that. The other one is that while the documentary records interviewees in several of South Africa's twelve official languages, what is not mentioned is why some of the interviewees would look Black to British viewers but are speaking Afrikaans instead of an African language. My understanding is that people categorised as Coloured (ie not Black or White) under apartheid were educated in Afrikaans and it would be another layer of apartheid legacy if it was explained whether that was why these speakers were speaking apartheid, or whether they picked it up as servants, etc.
I know I keep saying this but this is the best documentary I have seen.
The Apartheid Killer is available on BBC iPlayer and Africa Eye YouTube channels, in English Afrikaans and Zulu, with subtites. There is also a series of related podcasts in the BBC World of Secrets podcast.
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