Leon Labuschagne’s livelihood depends on death. At
nineteen, he is a warder on Death Row: a shepherd who
cares for the condemned – and a butcher who escorts them
to the gallows. After a gruelling two-week stint in which
thirty-two men were hanged, Leon loses control, with tragic
results. And now he’s the one facing the death penalty.
Only the most precarious line of legal argument stands
between Leon and the gallows. Chasing a defence, his
advocate trawls the deepest recesses of life in the Pot – the
twilight world of Death Row.
A gripping courtroom drama steeped in the factual,
Shepherds & Butchers begins in 1987, a year in which 164
people were executed. Two years later, the last man went
to the gallows in Pretoria, after more than four thousand
hangings that century. This novel portrays legal execution
in unprecedented detail, revealing its devastating impact on
all those involved.