Candace Mama's father was brutally murdered when she was only 8 months old. It was 1991, a time when apartheid in South Africa was beginning to crumble. Her father was a member of the Pan Africanist Congress which, alongside the African National Congress, was struggling to end segregation. As she got older, Candace knew she wanted to learn more about her father. At the age of nine, she opened a page in a book her mother kept tucked away. In it she discovered more about the murder. The emotional shock took its toll on her health, and she realized that, in order to heal herself, she must forgive Eugene de Kock, the police commander who perpetrated the crime. Years later, she was able to meet him face to face in prison and, with his permission, hug him. "When I decided to remove the emotional attachment that I held towards Eugene and the incident that occurred, I started realising that, 'Okay, I am forgiving this person,' and that's what forgiveness became to me, not having an emotional response to that trauma," she told BBC news.

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