Marnewick says the film, which stars Steve Coogan and Andrea Riseborough, and for which Barry Gibb wrote the song "Angels" (which plays at the end), focuses more on apartheid, rather than on the point Marnewick wanted to make, which is that state-sponsored killing is wrong and takes it toll not just on the convicted criminals, but on the guards who participate in their eventual killing.

The theme is that killing is wrong, killing human beings is wrong. That's my theme and, alongside it, that making people kill on our behalf is wrong because the killing of a human being changes the killer."

The film is about a white guard of the inmates, almost all of whom are black inmates, who goes beserk one day and kills 7 black soccer players following a road rage incident. He is then charged with murder.

The book, Marnewick says, is about life and death and what it means to take someone's life. It is set in apartheid-era South Africa but that is only the backdrop.

Some reviews suggest the life and death issues are a dual theme with that of apartheid.
"It's not an apartheid story, although they are now making a movie as if it is," says Marnewick.

Marnewick's character in the film is barrister Johann (John) Weber.

In 1987, 164 people were executed in South Africa, the highest annual toll in the country's history.

"And I started wondering about what that would do," Marnewick says. "How killing on that scale would affect the people who were doing the killing on behalf of the state. "I know the trauma that a lawyer goes through defending someone for his life - where you stand on your feet in court, cross-examining the witness, and a wrong question can see your client being taken away and hanged. "That's the pressure, that's the stress. And of course it tells."

Marnewick defended between 40 and 60 murder cases (none of his clients got the death penalty.) One high profile case he won, using a temporary insanity defense (called "sane automatism") resulted in death threats which led him to move to New Zealand. He began writing the book in 2002.

His book recounts the story of prison guard Johan, who began working at the maximum security unit at age 18 in 1986. Marnewick reviewed the case files of 32 inmates who were hanged in a five day period in 1987. Johan was present for all 32 of them.

Marnewick interviewed Johan, whose job it was to guard prisoners sentenced to death - to feed them, take them for haircuts, sit with them when they had visitors.

He was the shepherd.But on the day of the execution, he became the butcher. From 6am, Johan would escort a prisoner during the last hour of his or her life. He would take them to get their fingerprints recorded, sit next to them during a chapel service, and stay with them when the clock struck 7am. He watched as they took their final breath.

"And then when they had finished the execution - he didn't do that, that was the hangman's job - he had to go downstairs, take the bodies off the rope, go for another service with the deceased's family then go and bury the bodies and register their deaths," Marnewick says.

Marnewick' book focuses on how the system traumatized the guards and turn them into killing addicts:

What was unique and "utterly unthinkable" about this system, was that the warders were on first-name terms with the people they were helping execute.

They were both shepherds and butchers and, as Marnewick believed, the role exacted a terrible toll. "They became traumatised and, eventually, Johan told me, addicted to the process of killing those prisoners, although they weren't physically doing the killings."

Johan told Marnewick it became an adrenaline rush that he and others began to look forward to.
Marnewick says some wardens took their own lives and alcohol abuse was rife. There were brushes with the law, bar fights, road rage incidents. It's clear now they were suffering post-traumatic stress, Marnewick says. After witnessing other people suffer at such a scale, they started suffering themselves.

In the film,

Shepherds and Butchers follows the fictional story of a young prison warder named Leon Labuschagne, who at 19 and after a two-week stint of 32 executions, loses control and kills seven men.

He faces the death penalty and barrister Johann Weber defends him using the temporary insanity defence and, in doing so, investigates the life of those working on Death Row and the effects that the killing has on them.

Marnewick's point on the difference between the film and his book:

"It's got to be wrong in principle to take away life. "But when it comes to the book, I didn't want my views to influence the reader. I wanted the reader to see the abhorrent crimes that the 32 men had committed and were hanged for. "And then see at the same time the abhorrent methodology and process adopted in killing those very same people."

South Africa suspended the death penalty in 1989, under F.W. de Klerk. Marnewick teaches trial skills, and in addition to his creative writing, is the author of Litigation Skills for South African Lawyers, published by LEXISNEXIS.

A review of the film is here.

I guess I'm not sure about the difference between the film and the book's message. The actor Steve Coogan says in an interview:

No one is demonized in this film, apart from the system itself," Coogan said over the phone from New York...."It's about the brutalizing effect on those who carry out executions and the dehumanizing effect on all those involved."