Forgiveness Redefined – in conversation with Candice Mama

Candice Mama in conversation with Leona O’Neill. introduced by Professor Brandon Hamber, with thanks from Mark Durkan.

Recorded on Thursday 25 April 2024 at Ulster University’s Derry~Londonderry campus and edited by Alan Meban @alaninbelfast

okay uh good evening everybody uh my name is Brandon Hamber and I’m the John Hume and TP O’Neal chair in peace here at aler University and it’s my great pleasure to in welcome you all to to the campus uh tonight uh we’re going to go through a few uh welcome formalities at the start um and then we will be moving into the lecture with Candace Mama the talk uh followed by a Q&A session with Leon O’Neal uh from the University but I’ll keep us moving along as we do that um but as is customary at the University um I’m going to get uh our director of regional engagement uh Malik O’Neal uh just to say an official welcome uh to the university and then we’ll kick proceedings off thank you very much uh Brandon um delighted to be here this evening um delighted to have Candace here as our uh guest speaker uh my role at University is director of regional engagement uh which pretty much means that I look at after a lot of the elements of our people place and partnership strategy and uh the partnership that we enjoy with the the human Foundation is a very unique one a very special one uh it’s one that that that uh sits very well with our research and teaching activity um it uh it complements beautifully the work that that that Brandon does as as a human O’Neal chair uh and we’re we’re delighted that uh in this week where we had our see Roberta’s in the audience this evening as well we unveiled the third of our permanent exhibits of the conflict textiles uh collection across our uh our three University campus libraries and then of course tomorrow we’ll have our very unique leaders of the future 25 of 25 cohort here uh on campus uh for uh for one of their their boot cap uh sessions really shipping forming and molding uh the the leaders of the future and uh and learning from uh some brilliant examples in terms of that that leadership Journey so you’re all very welcome here this evening k so I thanks Maliki I appreciate that um and thank you all again for coming uh I’m just going to take two minutes just to contextualize a little bit of uh the visit of Candice and and how it fits into uh our Partnerships and and a wider program that’s been going on um firstly to say that this uh visit has been a very very long time um in the making um I as a student had a lecturer and I was going to my first conference and I said to the lecturer what do I do with this thing and the lecturer said look just keep it really simple whenever you go to a conference all you want to do is make one lasting contact and learn one new idea don’t do anything else and for about 30 years that’s pretty much been my philosophy of going to conferences and 5 years ago when it was the uh about was the 20th anniversary of the Good Friday agreement and the British Council had this large conference in Belfast and I heard Candace speak for the first time I’d known a little bit about her but I heard her speak for the first time and true to my little uh philosophy I thought that’s the person I’m going to get to know um and so bravely I went over and I introduced myself to Candace I’m also from uh South Africa and we you know start a bit of a correspondence and then I was in South Africa when she launched her book uh forgiveness redefined and said to I want you to come back and I want you to engage with young people and a different set of people uh when you come and visit so we got that all set up and we set the date for March 2020 um which turned out as many of you know not to be the best uh possible uh date uh for organizing a large event and so it got put off and it got put off and it got put off um and here we are today um but the interesting part of that story is in the middle of that we started a new set of work with the the John and Pat Hume foundation with Community dialogue with International um with the integrated education fund with Hollywood trust with youth action with the Northern Ireland Youth Forum and supported by the international fund for Ireland and it was called the peace Summit and the idea behind this group of people coming together was to ask the question now 25 years on from The Good Friday agreement what are still the outstanding issues uh of the peace process so in the time that it took to get Candice here this uh partnership has flourished we had a large peace Summit last year today we were with nearly a hundred young people talking about their aspirations for peace uh through the through the peace Summit and and largely supported by by the Hume foundation so in fact by the time it came around I feel like we were in a better place than we we were in uh March 2020 we have this larger process that Candace has now filled in and it was fantastic today to see her interacting and working with uh working with the young people um and so this lecture uh and talk and uh to tonight is part of that uh that wider process so where you see these banners that say youth peace Summit that was about the events uh the events today um so I want to thank all those Partners I’m going to thank you now at the start and particularly also thank the international fund for Ireland who’ve supported that uh that process and made all of this possible and so I’m going to turn to Patty Hart the chair of international fund for Island just to say a few words and then we’ll we’ll kick off [Applause] thank thanks Brandon um absolutely delighted to be here uh representing the fondi I chair I chair a wonderful organization I’m really looking forward to hearing a very in inspiring and thought provoking conversation with Kansas uh we spoke a little bit uh and I promise I won’t say anything that we said earlier we all know who canvas is now so I by pass on that I just go to say that we’re really proud that we started the relationship with the peace Summit with the pat John human Foundation uh back in 23 as Brandon has has talked about we we really talked about the journey all Journey towards what peace looked like coming up up to the the celebrating of the Good Friday agreement 25th anniversy of the Good Friday agreement and then earlier today we on on summer 24 uh we looked at the engagement young people and just their vision for the future really looking forward to the outcome of that most of us this room will know that sharing thoughts and experiences from a wide range of of individuals and groups who in some way or other have been involved in in peace building allows us to get a better understanding of where we are and gets a better understanding of the journey uh that other people are other people are making so we like to call them that these These are the stories of everyday peacemakers I think it’s important um we were just sharing this earlier that that the role of everyone in the process of getting getting to peace is is recognized and we’re very keen to make sure that we do more things uh like what we’re doing with the peace Summit where it’s about it involves everyone it’s everyone’s responsibility traditionally it has been the responsibility of of people who involved in in peace work but until it’s embraced by everyone then we run the risk of it not being protected by everyone and we’re very keen to make sure we we make sure we do that and talking about everyday peace Builders uh many of you may or may not know that Genesis of the international fund for Ireland um happened within a m of here uh two uh two peace Builders one well known John Hume internationally one wellknown locally Patty bogside uh uh Dy Dar with you see most people in the room will know both of them uh so how the international fund came about was they were bringing tip O’Neil tip O’Neil was the speaker uh of the house of representatives in uh in the US uh to to look at what was happening and they noted that an awful lot of young people were rioting and seem to be on the streets and were vulnerable to getting involved and in in the violence uh and tip need said well how can we solve this and John human and uh Pat said Financial package uh and eventually over a lot of work and markk Durkin was a big player in negotiating that as as well ended up the international fund for Ireland been set up by the British and Irish governments the first practical body that they set up since the beginning of the of of the of the stat that was that’s very significant an organization it was then and and so and continues to be so with the British D governments the US government Canada Australia New Zealand and for a little while the EU came on board and what’s important about that is that um is that it balanced all the different um constituencies that have to had to be be um be on board so so it’s it’s it’s International cross community it’s diasporas that are both nationalist diasporas um unionist diasporas so it’s a really important organization in that in that regard since 1986 uh all of those Partners have invested just shy of a billion billion Euro uh and in that billion Euro there’s something like and in in measurable terms there’s something like 500,000 um 50,000 sorry jobs and about 8,000 projects but more importantly it’s been about building relationships and about building leadership and about about getting young people as emerging leaders and we’re very proud about of all of that and again just before I finish it’s important to recognize just the really significant role that the international funds played at one level the way that it was structured meant that that public servants civil society and private private sector could work together on a crossb basis with International money which was independent of EX Checkers and at that point the only crossborder body that existed on on the island of AR was the foil Fisheries commission many of you may know was the water rats and but the police just the the um that comes from someone who grew up at the border that’s a that’s a very broal term for the for the for the for those who necessarily had to PR the waters so it was a it was the the first organization that made that possible so whenever you look at the Joint ministerial bodies now they all the big cross B bodies they were easier because the relationships that already been built by working on working together on projects that were International FR projects and secondly because we were our International the governments allowed us to be Innovative allowed us to take risks allowed us to come up with models feel but predominantly uh succeed in models that that we’re very keen now to of first to learn what Candace is going to tell about about her journey and also for us to share what we’ve learned elsewhere as we just said at the end I finish on this can says not many people actually know uh what what the what the success story of of the peace process is here lots of us just think it sort of happened with um and and lots of people need to know because while you can’t you you can’t transfer the the model of Peace here you can take some really valuable lessons and we think we we we’re um we’re playing an important part of that so again uh congratulations to the spee summer for what they what they’ve done and we’re delighted to be with it and really looking forward to hearing canas to thank you thank you Patty and again thanks very much for the support uh of of the IFI I know you you’re all wanting to hear from Candace so let’s uh let’s do that um we’re going to start with about 20 minutes from Candace um and I know many of you might have heard her on the radio today or looked at the website but I do want to introduce you uh formally even though um people might know a little bit Candace is going to tell her about her story so I’m not going to mention that but people like the Dal Lama have listened to Candace’s story she’s one of Vogue magazine’s top 33 most inspiring woman uh along with Michelle Obama Malala she was named as the top 20 in the top 20 of African women by the African Union and the United Nations in 2020 as the United Nations celebrated 75 years it picked 75 people around the world to represent its aspirations and Candace was one of those 75 uh people which is quite phenomenal uh her story is featured in a documentary called it’s a pleasure uh to meet you she’s published a book called forgiveness redefined uh about her story which is uh incredible to read she is a multi-award winning speaker an international podcaster a tedex uh speaker a mentor of a range of people in different continents um and so it’s just fantastic that she’s here to share her story with us tonight and uh thank you very much uh firstly I want to say thank you so very much to Brandon uh who says that he was really Brave to come and meet me which makes me question how aggressive I look because I was like I hope it didn’t take that much bravery uh but thank you for having me here and Pat thank you and everyone that’s made this possible it’s been such an incredible day for me and like Brandon said we spend so much time with young peace Builders and it is always so inspiring in a world whereby everyone is an activist on Twitter and you know everyone wants to have a say but they don’t want to actually do the work it’s incredible to be surrounded by people who are doing the work and are starting to do it at a very young age of 15 16 17 and I’m like my goodness I wish I met them when I was that age because goodness I was a mess uh but you know there’s something that Pat and I spoke about just before I got on so you didn’t say it but I’m going to say it um and we were speaking about whenever you speak or look at conflict zones and peaceful States we always celebrate the hero right the person at the end who picks up the trophy and when you said this to me it was so impactful because in many ways with the accolades and the achievement it’s really lovely but I am under No Illusion that I represent that Trophy winner right I am a South African but I am one of many of my people that do not get to stand on the stage that will never get this opportunity to tell their stories and that is why I treat it with such respect and I treat everyone who listens to me with such respect because I am not only telling my story I’m telling the story of my entire people and so what is the story you are all in Northern Ireland and I’m sure you are very familiar with South Africa and the history of my country so I know I don’t look older than 21 but but I am 33 years old and so what that defines me as as in my country is a Born Free so what Born Free means is that you are born free from the repercussions of aparte which is a really interesting concept when you think about it because one is born at a certain time while people in my country were still dying and all of a sudden because you’re reaching Consciousness you are no longer impacted by the past so it’s a really interesting concept and I know here in Northern Ireland they kids are called the ceasefire generation and so they shouldn’t complain because you don’t know what happened right you did not go through what we went through but we are dealing with the consequences of what you went through and so that’s very much my story and so I’m going to take you back to 1991 when I was born yes I’m 33 uh and so when I was born in the beautiful country of South Africa that’s known for a lot of things I’m sure we could all name things that we’ve heard of or love about South Africa right this warm people the wine farms the food that’s very cheap but very good so we can name all these incredible things but in 1991 those privileges that I’ve just mentioned were reserved for a very select few people and so when I was born my dad was 24 years old and my mom was 23 years old and and 9 months after my birth my father was brutally murdered by an apartheid Assassin by the name of Eugene the and so growing up I had no conscious idea of what this meant for me I knew I didn’t have a normal family but I didn’t understand what that was I didn’t have a father and I was okay with that however I reached the age of nine and I remember my mom purchased the book and on the book it was written Into the Heart of Darkness and the author was j po and so every time we would get visitors my mom would send me to go get this book and I would run and I’d get the book and I’d take it to her and she’d chew me out of the room really quickly but I started getting really curious because every time I gave her this book whoever was listening or was watching or was in that room would start start screaming hysterically or crying and I used to think to myself what is in this book and so one day I started playing around the area that they were and I was listening to what they were looking at and I remember hearing that it was a picture of my dad and so I got so excited and I started scheming about how I was going to see this picture of my dad cuz at this time I’d only owned about three or four pictures so one day I got my golden opportunity my mom had to go buy something and I remember watching her reverse out of the driveway and I ran up to the room really quickly I grabbed the book I sat at the edge of the bed and I started paging through but now as an adult I can see that I started feeling anxiety as I was paging through and so when I got to the page that I’d overheard the picture that I saw was my dad’s burnt body clutching a steering wheel and his eyes were protruding and so that picture was burnt into my mind and from the age of nine I was not the same person I was depressed I did not like people I did not trust people and I remember teachers would say to my mom oh my goodness Candace is so mature for her age and what many people don’t realize is that when a child matures quickly it’s usually because they’ve experienced some sort of trauma so that was my first contact with my dad his legacy and what had happened to him so fast forward I get to around the age of 16 and I go to bed one day and I’m an athlete I was eating super while I was highly competitive but I started having this pain in my chest and I remember thinking I think I’m having a heart attack so I rushed to my mom’s room and I say to her I think I’m I’m having a heart attack and so my mom rushed me to the hospital I was kept overnight and the next day the doctor asked to sit with my mom and I and he said to us in my over 20 years of experience I have never seen stress symptoms so severe in someone your age and he followed with the words your body is killing you and if you don’t change what you’re doing you’re going to die and so at that point point there was a lot of thoughts going through my mind and a part of me was suicidal anyway so I was like well if I go this way it’s going to be easier but I remember a few weeks or months passed and I was walking from training and a thought hit me and the thought was Eugene the C killed your father and now you’re letting him kill you too and that became the moment that changed my life from that moment I decided that I was going to live I was going to survive and I was going to figure out how to get through this so fast forward and I get to the age of 24 and I am thriving I am living my best life I feel like I’m on the other side of this and I go home and I remember my mom was at the top of the Stace and she shouts down and she says I got a call from the national Prosecuting authorities and they want to know if we want to meet Eugene those were words I never thought I’d ever hear in my my life and so I remember freezing and I said to her yes and she said well if you don’t want to go if no one wants to go then we don’t have to go but if one of you goes I’ll come along and I said yes I’m going and the reason for this isn’t because I’m so brave or so enlightened it was because I understood in that moment that if I did not do this I would regret it for the rest of my life and so the day came my whole family decided to go it was myself my two brothers my grandfather and my mom so we got to the prison and it was an odd situation because I don’t know when I say prison what you imagine but I did not imagine walking into what looked like an old relative’s apartment it was warm it was comfortable it was cozy there was tea and scon and I was like what is happening and so they said please you know get some tea get some scans and we get our tea and scans and we align ourselves at the table so it’s a long dining room table and so I remember sitting at the end of the one side then it was my younger brother older brother grandfather and my mother and then on the other side was two seats so it was for the warden of the prison and the national Prosecuting Authority member across from us for the gods the wardens of the prison and then next to me was the priest and next to him was an empty chair and so the priest said you know this is how it’s going to go if you ever feel uncomfortable let us know but you free to ask anything great so we sat and I’m speaking to my brother and I remember turning around for some reason and as though by Magic Eugene was sitting there and the scariest thing was he looked exactly like every image he had haunted him my mind like every presentation I’d seen growing up he had not aged one bit and I just held my breath and I think the priest saw the shock in my face because he started the conversation and he said okay let’s start this and he introduced my mother first and he said that’s Sandra Mama Widow of the deceased Clinic my mama and Eugene leaned forward and said pleasure to meet you and then he leaned back and with each and every one of us he would say pleasure to meet you and he’d lean back and so my mom asked the first question and she said Eugene I just want to know what happened to my husband because all we knew as a family was that my dad was class a terrorist and he was shoted and that was it and so Eugene broke down exactly how he managed to kill my father and he said to us that my father was identified by the government as a troublemaker and so they needed to win over his trust before they could kill him so what they decided to do was get an escari so an escari is someone who works for both sides of the government and he sent this escari toward my father’s trust and the scari would report back and he’d go back and forth and eventually he said I think I’ve got it and so they said okay let him drive a man across the border and then we good so the scari tell them you know this is what you need to do my dad thinking nothing of it I’m sure says cool so my dad starts driving about 45 minutes outside of town to a town called NPR and as he’s approaching this bridge he didn’t know that Eugene the was standing at the top of the bridge waiting for him and on either side of the bridge were four men armed and as the Mini Bus approached they started firing at the Mini Bus when Eugene realized that my father wasn’t coming to a stop he ran down the bridge and he emptied out his magazine cartridge on my dad when the car finally stopped and he still saw signs of life in the vehicle he decided to D them all in fuel and set them a light and so that was the first time we had such a vivid image and experience of my dad’s final moments so the conversation continued and throughout this whole experience I couldn’t say anything and Eugene was sharing different aspects of himself and his life and I remember my mom saying Eugene you know I just want to say I forgive you and I was like okay and then my grandfather said I forgive you then my two brothers said it and then it got to me and I said hi Eugene and he looked at me and he said hi and I said you know I want to say I forgive you but before I do I need to ask you one question and he said anything what’s that and I said I want to know do you forgive yourself and for the first time in that whole encounter he was no longer stoic he looked away and he wiped the side of his eye cuz the tear had come down and he said when you’ve done the things I’ve done how do you forgive yourself and I started to sob I cried and I cried and I cried but what surprised me was that I wasn’t crying for myself I realized that there was nothing this human being could say that could take away my pain and there was nothing I could say to take away his and so they encounter wed up the priest off if there’s anything else we said no and then we were dismissed and I stood up first and so I walked around the priest and I went up to Eugene who was still sitting and I said Eugene would you mind if I gave you a hug and he looked at me confused and he stood up towering over me and he held me really tightly and he said I’m so sorry for what I’ve done and your father would have been so proud of woman you’ve become and I remember thinking in that moment that the same hands that are being used to comfort me were the same hands that took away my father I lived that encounter and I decided to do what many would think is Unthinkable and I decided to petition for Eugene’s parole he was not eligible for parole he had been s since the 212 years in prison on 89 charges of murder and I stated in my letter that I do not speak for all the victims but I speak for myself and what I see is a new South Africa Yates the person who commanded my father’s killing who was the president at the time got the Nobel Peace Prize and the man who pulled the trigger got a life imprison M and that to me was my justice so thank you so much for allowing me to share my story with you today it has been an incredible honor and yeah I think I’m going to get interviewed by Lea never quite sure what to say after hearing you speak so I probably won’t say anything but thank you uh very much for sharing that uh with us it’s always hard for me to hear it as a South African and all the complexity that that uh brings up uh what we’re going to do now is Leona O’Neal uh who is with us here at the University many of you will know her uh Leona is a journalist in Northern Ireland for nearly 25 years she worked in the Belfast Telegraph the Irish news El jazer Vice news and many others she is now the head of undergraduate journalism at the University which is brilliant for us really brilliant um and uh for the last number of years when I said to her tell me how you want me introduce to you she said she enjoys leading the Next Generation into an industry she loves so much um so that’s a beautiful way uh of putting it so I really look forward to your interaction and we’ll just leave it to you and uh thank you thank you so much Brandon and thank you Candace that was so so moving I I I was nearly in tears there just even and listening to you it must be very um it must be hard to talk about that that uh kind of stuff um that trauma that has consumed I suppose your your life and your family’s life and thank you so much for for sharing it with us and uh in this kind of intimate setting it’s uh it was really really special Northern Ireland has learned so much from um with regards peace building uh from South Africa can you tell me about the the South Africa that your parents grew up and what was it from their from your mom’s stories what was that what was that like yeah it was was a very different South Africa to the one of course I experienced and it was different for my dad as much as it was for my mom because I don’t know how many of you know Trevor Noah but he wrote a book called Born of crime and so my mother was born a crime because she was a mixed race child and so her whole childhood meant that she was hiding she was being hidden by different families people were trying to take her from her home they tried to take her from her school school when they realized that her mother was black so she had a very different experience and then my dad who was a black man who had gone through so much trauma already so my dad knew that you know being young being black was what was considered a curse yet what I appreciate about him is I found journals that he kept and his mindset was so powerful he would script things like like your skin color is not a curse your mind matters more you know what your mind can think of it can achieve you are limited by your own li like mindset and so he had a really great Outlook and everyone who speaks about my dad will always say that if there’s one thing he knew how to do was milk every moment of joy that man was not going to leave a good time unless he had to so yeah I think as much as it was a troubled South Africa I think both of them took the joy and the pain and you were talking there about you know people painting a picture for of your father for you that that must have been tough as well you you have obviously have no experience of him at all what what kind of picture were they painting over the years I’m sure you’ve met people who knew him and grew up with him and whatnot uh what what what what picture was painted of him for you yeah it was great because I got to formulate my dad right right and uh I just want to touch on something which I’m sure sometimes people think but feel like it would be insensitive to ask um which is you know I never knew my dad so some people would say Well it must be easier because you never got to know him therefore you know you what are you really mourning and the truth is I think there’s two different types of grief grieving someone that you knew could touch could spend time with because in that grief you got to know the person holistically you got to see their flaws and their joy and all the good and the bad and everything in between when you mourn someone you’ve never met the problem with that is you create the most idealized version of them because they never have the opportunity to disappoint you they are your Superman you fantasize about oh my life could have been so much better if this one human being was still on earth right and so the stories I told told myself about my dad were very idealized in the beginning but then As I Grew Older I started seeing the Nuance in his characters so he was 24 when he passed away but when people speak about him you’d swear they speaking about a 60-year-old man because he loved music he loved to dance he loved a good time but also everyone would say to me when my dad was set on a goal nothing could shift him from it and when he got set on taking on the regime nothing could move him from his path and so he’s very he was a very resilient man and also fun cuz you know I have a good time even though I talk about serious stuff what impact did his loss have on your family you were only 9 months old your your mother was thrust into widowhood and you had you had Brothers also and and his parents it must have been absolutely awful for your mom and for for everyone around that how did you all COPE in those years even just even leading up to you actually saw the the image in the book how did you cope do you remember being different do you remember you know your your mom treating you any differently or anything like that absolutely I mean that’s the thing with loss right so often when we imagine someone being pulled out of an ecosystem we assume that the system they pulled out of Remains the Same but the problem is it never does and so as a result of my Dad’s passing I grew up in a broken home my mom was a wounded woman who had to go identify her murdered husband and see his burnt body I did not have that you know so when she would raise us she raised us in the best way she knew how which was I’m feeding you I’m clothing you you’ve got a roof over your head so we never had space for emotions and that kind of rhetoric in our house it was is about you get things done and you get out and you face the world because the world is Harsh and so when I reflect on my family even today I see the Brokenness and I see how in many ways I’ve escaped the Brokenness and yet you still get pulled into waves of it because the one thing about healing you cannot pull people along you can give them tools you can give them support and you can give them the reassurance that you’ll always be there but you cannot do the hard hard work of healing for them and so yeah my childhood was that of trauma because that’s what situations like this spring here in Northern Ireland so many families have suffered a loss like yourself and there’s almost a community of them I don’t know if it’s the same in South Africa where there were people that you could talk to people that you could relate to people who had the similar experience to did you find that or did you feel quite isolated in your experience I feel like it could have been different in South Africa and the reason for that is we almost overnight went from segregated to integrated so I went to school with all black kids then I went to school with white black and everybody in between and so we didn’t have the space to collectively grieve and mourn and think and reflect we were just living through the new cycle and I feel like there was actually more of guilt if you didn’t appreciate the fact that you had this new opportunity and lease on life how dare you take us back why would you want to talk about that painful time and to this day so many people will say it was so long ago just get over it you know and so I think that is South Africa I think it’s beautiful in a sense because we have managed to do so much and move forward so quickly but I do think that so many people that were impacted by the trauma almost feel silenced and that’s why even when I started this talk I am incredibly privileged I am privileged to be sitting in front of you because in my country people who look like me and you know have my same story may come from an uneducated background they may be a domestic worker they may not look a certain way and carry themselves a certain way and then they just don’t get listened to they get lumped into the people that are filled with trauma over there and because I don’t look like the typical victim that we’ve seen on screen I’ve been given a voice to represent all the Unseen people so I don’t take that lightly do you feel you were sheltered um from the reality of your your father’s death when you were a child and you mentioned there when you were talking about the book and you saw that for the first time and that was such a stark graphic horrible brutal image how did you feel actually I know you were nine but how did you feel actually viewing that image that must have been horrific for you absolutely so I mean I had a very unconventional childhood because when my dad passed away my mom did the best thing she thought to do at that time and she sent me off to live with my great grandmother and so she stayed with my older brother I lived with my great-grandmother so that was normal to me like life on the farm was was great um and then I came to the city when I was around five and then I lived with my grandmother and so I knew my mom from a periphery perspective not so much as a maternal figure and then I only lived with my mom at around the age of eight and that’s when I realized the complexity of our family and that not everyone lives with every lineage in their female matrial line I was like oh you never with your great grandmother that’s so weird um but yeah so I think my mom did the best she could and I’m really grateful for it because I got to see different parts of South Africa and I was exposed to it firsthand and so by the time I saw the book and I experienced that trauma it was devastating but I wouldn’t change it because I wouldn’t be where I am today you obviously internalized a lot of that also as a child and you were talking about you know you had the the heart problems did you realize that age what that was did you realize you were traumatized did you normalize it or did the realization of all of that come at a at a later date I was very lucky because my mom forced us to read so we had to read all kinds of literature and one of the Texs that she had bought was Napoleon Hill and it was also the secret it was in that wave of the mind power movement and the you know hippie stuff Nerf ins anyone who’s a hi in here um but it was in that movement you know of all of a sudden realizing how the mind impacts the body the body impacts the Mind Etc so I was very lucky to have been exposed to those works even though it wasn’t something that I completely believed in and I do think that leaning into it too much can be can do more damage than good because if you believe you are responsible for every single thing that’s happened to you that doesn’t leave you much room to heal and navigate the pain of loss and the messiness of that but what I did realize was that every time I’d see Eugene’s picture or he was up for parole I had a physical reaction so I knew that there was something linked and so had I not had the access to those books I’m not sure I could have tied the two together um what were your teenage years like because in our teenage years we often find ourselves and you you you told us there you found yourself angry and depressed what what was it like navigating those years so for me navigating my teenage years was probably like navigating my childhood uh so because trauma forces you to grow up so quickly I felt like I was an adult at 9 okay I was having gossip sessions with my mom’s friends I was like tell me more Teresa pour the tea and uh so by the time I got to a teenager I’d already skipped the childhood part let skipped the teenage part I was just an adult I was just responsible for everything that was happening and how I destressed was through comp competitive Sports and so all I did was just train and train and train and that’s how I could detect that there was something off when I went to bed that one night but like I said you know when you do have traumatized families it’s kind of like every man FS for themselves and you don’t have I always joke with my younger brother cuz I say to him when he would throw these teenage Tampa Tantrums I’d say you are so lucky cuz we did not have the luxury of doing all of this you know um so yeah I’d say I skipped my teenag years and just went from nine to adult so you you told us there when you were in your 20s your your mom said look do you want to meet uh your father’s killer what was going through your head at that moment when you you you had built him was a monster I would imagine at that stage you had built is like the boogeyman like um a monster because he had consumed your life he had taken so much stuff from you um how did you feel in that moment that your mom said do you want to me what were were there conflicting feelings or was it just yes straight away it was definitely an outof Body Experience uh because it’s one of those moments you never think is going to happen to you until it happens to you and all I remember thinking and that kept running through my head was what if you never get this opportunity again what if you never get to ask him the questions you have what if you know you live with this regret forever um and so that’s why the yes for me was so sudden and immediate because I just didn’t want the regret of not knowing uh and I was willing to deal with the pain of him exhibiting traits of lack of remorse or him not being apologetic or arrogant or all of that but I felt like I was used to pain and so I could handle it and move past it but if I never did it I would constantly be living in that regret cycle of what if and I didn’t want that and what was it like sitting in the prison waiting for him what was it like him coming in and being face to face with this man who has haunted your entire life what were the emotions going through your head that what what did you expect from him and did he fulfill those expectations ironically I expected nothing and I know it’s an interesting thing to say but when you’ve grown up with this Boogeyman or this figure over your head you’ve created pretty much every imaginable scenario in your mind about who this person is so I had no expectation of how he was going to come across who he was going to be to us if he was even going to talk to us to be quite Frank uh but I think I don’t know how many of you know like experienced this or have it in your own families but my family deals with trauma through humor so we just laugh about everything like it could be the saddest thing and we are cracking jokes like there’s one minute of like oh wow that happened to you and then next thing you know someone comes from the kitchen and they just give a slide joke about it like oh we always knew you know so we were dealing with it in that way we were cracking jokes you know we were teasing each other but I will say that him like cuz I didn’t see him walking he was just there and so I think that was the moment of shock and realization and bringing me back into my body cuz up until that point I think I was just outside of myself I was just kind of like what am I doing like what’s this you know and then when he appeared it all of a sudden became very real that oh we’re really doing this and when he recounted your father’s murder did that trst did his trst did it hurt you more or did it heal so it was a little bit of both um but in the sense that all of a sudden you get a truth that you were denied pretty much your whole life we knew my dad had died gruesomely there were reports in the newspaper saying you know terrorists killed in a shootout with police so we knew aspects but I think him retelling it because he’s got a photographic memory so he lives with this very detailed memory of my dad and I’m sure many others so hearing that was like someone had kicked you in your stomach and you kind of just Rel living it through the lens of you know the person you love and so I’m not going to lie and pretend that it was an easy experience it definitely felt as though I was reliving the trauma I was reliving the moment that my dad took his final breath did Eugene ask for forgiveness or was it was it given willingly at that stage he didn’t um and it’s an interesting one because I’ve asked myself this right I left the prison I petitioned for his parole he received that um 24 thrown into the public Limelight and you reflect a lot between the moment of pinning the letter to hearing that you know the justice system has agreed with your letter to the man being released you have so many moments of questions and wondering like did he play me was he remorseful is he a good actor like how many did I miss anything and to be quite honest he didn’t need to ask because his actions told me that this is a wounded man and so there are stories in between and the whole encounter that of course I don’t go into detail with and some were told in confidence and I’ll never reveal them but they gave me a detailed encounter into the psyche of this man and I think it was so much easier and I think for many of us it’s so much easier thinking that evil exists outside of us that they’re evil people and they’re good people but if that was true we could just ship the evil people onto an island and we’d all be living in harmony but we know that that’s not a real reality because with a right set of circumstances many of us would do things that we would never imagine and that’s what I learned in that encounter and walking away from the Pres that day did you feel relief was it like two prisoners were almost released you and you and he is that what it felt like yeah definitely I wrote that in my book you know that it was this really interesting experience but I think what I experienced was interesting because we only sat with Eugene for about 45 minutes but when I tell you I felt like I’d been in a boot camp my body was exhausted I just I couldn’t speak I couldn’t process there was just so much over stimulation that had happened in that moment and so it was only in the next day that I could really reflect and realize how much lighter I felt you know and I think the reason I speak about forgiveness is definitely not to tell people you should forgive you need to do this cuz it’s the right thing to do and it’s God’s Will and it’s we’ve heard it all right forgive and forgive forgive and move forward forgiven this and so even writing my book forgiveness was a really tricky one for me to grasp because I thought I don’t Define forgiveness the way I was taught forgiveness forgiveness to me was a very selfish act it wasn’t for Eugene yes he received the branch of forgiveness and the extension of that forgiveness but by forgiving Eugene I was really setting myself free I was healing myself and I was refusing for him to control any other element of my life and so yeah I think I deviated from the question but I think that’s really important yeah you advocated for his parole and um did you stay in contact after this what is your relationship with him now have you got one yeah so uh after he received his parole both of us were in a lot of media um and in that moment I realized that forever from this moment forward when people say Candace mama there’s is going to pop up and every time people say Eugene my face is going to be like um and so it was interesting because all of a sudden my identity had been crafted by a moment that was actually an intimate moment and because of his reputation and profile it became a public moment which I completely understand but when he was released he was released on very stringent uh conditions and I remember someone ask me you petition for his parole would you have a coffee with him and I said well this could go one of two ways I could have petitioned for his parole and he’s a psycho maniac and he goes off and he does unimaginable things and I’m going to be responsible and I’m like he could also go off and go plant trees and do good for the world and I would have no accountability for that right and if I expect everyone else everyone in this auditor everyone in South Africa to deal with him in a human interaction then I would be a hypocrite not to want to spend time with him after prison and so the only reason we haven’t done coffee is because of his very stringent Bell conditions and we have communicated through letters and we’ve got a mutual friend it’s very covert you know you send a letter to this one and then they send it back um but it’s only because you know the government the government doesn’t trust them to be out so well trust them in the sense of what he will tell the world thank you J it takes an enormous amount of compassion to free someone who hurt you from their guilt and their pain do you think that we all have that compassion in us or is it something that you have have have learned yourself or learned to um cultivate yourself after having done this work for close to 10 years now the most common thing I hear from people is love your story so great thanks for sharing but I could never and it’s always funny to me because I could have never either you know so we all are walking this path where we have incredible capacity we have an incredible capacity to love we have an incredible capacity to hate and we are not linear human beings like human beings aren’t designed in silos we all have capacity within us we just need the right impetus to do the right thing and so when you hear stories from other people the reason as human beings We Gather to listen to one another’s stories is because we find a mirror within a story and the only reason you connect with my story is because you see an element of your story in it and the truth about trauma is I hate to break it to everyone but none of us are going to escape this life unscathed and if you’ve done it so far congratulations but life is coming for you and I think it’s all about contextualizing how we view trauma and how we view forgiveness because sometimes I think human beings have the incredible capacity to downplay their pain so they’ll say to you yeah you know my dad abandoned us but I’m fine I don’t care I’m good I I I I mean I’m married I’m fine and you realize the pain and the isolation that person is feeling but refusing to recognize so I think that when we forgive and we forgive ourselves first and foremost and then perhaps forgive the person who’s caused us pain what that will prevent in the future is what we see in the world today which is when you look at politics around the world today it’s a whole bunch of little boys cause playing as adults they are all wounded Donald Trump is a wounded man he’s a man in pain and the only way he gets that attention and he gets us all to listen and pay attention is when he says and does outrageous things where do you see that behavior in little boys because they don’t know how to articulate what they need and so when we heal ourselves and we embark on that Journey of doing the unthinkable as we like to say I’d like to think that we’re forming a better Society any your eyes and what is exactly is forgiveness is it forgetting also or or just the one just forgiveness do you forget also wow there’s one saying that will get under my skin and that is forgive and forget um I think it would be one of the stupidest things for any human being to do to forget the fundamental situation that has made you who you are we are all crafted by the different stories that we encounter on our life Journeys and so forgetting is not even on the cards CU even if you wanted to you couldn’t do it right so for me forgiveness is about realizing that trauma is an interesting thing because the human brain is interesting our human brain does not realize when something is actually happening to US versus when it’s an imagined reality or we watching something and how do you know this when you watch a horror movie you know you are safe in your house but why is your heart racing why are you hiding why are you scared to switch off your lights when you’re going to bed you know that character doesn’t exist yet your body is reacting to the stimulus that you have given it and so trauma is exactly the same when we experience trauma that’s our first point of contact with a pain the problem becomes when we relive that trauma we are continuously ret traumatizing ourselves so it’s like a scab you keep picking at it and it keeps bleeding so it never heals and what forgiveness is it’s a narrative change and the narrative is I refuse to be a victim to this any longer I’m going to be the victor of this situation and I’m going to take back my own power because the trauma may not be our responsibility ility but the healing is and so when we take back the power of our stories what we saying is that person who hurt me no longer has the power to dictate how I move through my life because the problem with pain is we don’t think we acting out of a place of pain but if you are walking around with a bleeding gaping wound you are going to bleed on people that did not hurt you and no matter how much you try and avoid it you’re going to bleed all over your your kids you’re going to bleed all over your spouse because you are punishing other people for what one individual or those people did to you and when you realize that what are those people doing cuz I had this one uh thought once uh while I was on the journey to forgiving Eugene and it was like oh my gosh I am in this Panic body State I was having palpitation sweating so angry and I was like what is Eugene doing right now the man is probably eating an apple in his prison cell and he does not even know I exist yet he had so much power he was controlling my life everything I did was dictated by Eugene and until I forgave him I did not have freedom and only after releasing that pain could I actually start to live I was just going to say actually here in Northern Ireland we know so much about suffering and I’ve spoken to people in last couple of days whenever I was saying I was going to interview you and they said I could never forgive I could never forgive uh the person who did this hurt to me and and I was going to ask you how do we here in Northern Ireland get to that place of forgiveness um how do you how do you get people to get to that place where they forgive the person who hurt them but I think you answered it so beautifully there um I’ll I’ll maybe the last question you were you were at the very start you were talking about the picture that was painted of your of your father for you growing up what do you think he would think of your journey um thus far wow I mean you know so many times I Envision my father and the life that he lived and the Legacy he created at such a young age and I remember when I hit the age cuz you know when you are 16 and 15 20 years old you are like wow the elders the adults um and so that’s the picture I had of my dad for a very long time the Elder and I remember hitting the age of 24 and I had a complete mental breakdown I started crying CU I realized that he managed to squeeze so much into his life and I was 24 still figuring out what I’m doing with mine and so when I think of the sacrifice and the knowing sacrifice that he you know embarked on and I look at my life today and how I am my friends and if we talk you’ll realize I a complete goofball like don’t take me seriously but I love laughing I love dancing I don’t take myself too seriously and I think that’s what I’ve learned from walking alongside my dad and so I think he’d be proud because we are having a lot of fun together okay every time I’m dancing alone he’s somewhere there like you know doing the Boogie Wonderland song so yeah I’d like to think he’d be proud of just not just me but the progress that he died for actually taking action in real life yeah beautiful beautiful words have we got questions from the audience have we got a ruen mic hi thank you so much um my question just goes back to when you had hugged the man and when you left um I suppose I want I know in terms of your family you had siblings and you had um your mom was was there your grandparent was there um how did they react like you know you showed this incredible almost not human level of compassion this emotion that a lot of people even in this room probably can’t relate to what was the reaction of your immediate family have they come to terms with the incredible being that you are in that respect that’s basically it and thank you again thank you I’m sorry what’s your name oh I’m Joseph hi Joseph hi Joseph and thank you for the question uh so so my family collectively forgave Eugene if anything it started with my mom and you know uh all of us were forgiving in a row if you will um I don’t know if my family looked at it in that sense because the thing is you know it’s one thing for me to be sitting in front of all of you today and sharing this on behalf of many South Africans not just my family but many others whereas you are the part of the process and you’re part of the pain journey and the Forgiveness Journey uh you realize that it becomes so natural to step into that um I’m a natural hugger I love a good hug um and so personal space during Co was not my thing so I locked myself up um but I to me that’s what being a human being is right to exchange that moment and to say we have just shared a moment that many people will never have and even if I walked away with nothing at that just that Embrace alone would have been itched into my memory for the rest of my life and thank you over here uh Candace thank you very much it’s been inspiring to hear what you’ve said this evening um I visited South Africa actually in 1995 I was very fortunate I was able to spend six weeks there and it is a beautiful country I was able to go from paloro down the Cape Town Kimberly Etc I was actually based in Johannesburg uh Nelson Mandela had just taken over when I returned I read a book called knowledge in the blood I don’t know if you know the book that was about um a black lecturer who joined one of the universities and he was lecturing Afric caners and he talks about the difficulty because of the Legacy that the students held of when the africanas were were in par and the difficult of that I was wondering has South Africa now moved beyond that and U could you comment if you can on the effectiveness and impact of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission thank you absolutely and thank you so much for the question so it is important to always look at progress and to see where we were 30 years ago versus where we are today and when you look at that kind of escalated progress where we literally turned a page and we w’t integrated Society it’s going to come with teething problems so I like comparing countries to people and the reason I do that is because when we realize that no one in the world would elect a 30-year-old politician to be president yet we expect a 50-year-old democracy to have it all figured out and know what they doing so as far as the integration process it’s still occurring but as we know with any conflict around the world that progress is slow especially when economics have been a major factor in keeping people segregated and so I think the reason we’re not probably seeing the rapid fire integration that we would like to see is because many people are still living in poverty so many people are still living below the poverty line of all Races and we are starting to see it escalate in South Africa and so I’m finding South Africa to be interesting at the moment because I’m not finding it to be as racially combative as people would assume we are as much as it’s become very classist the haves are protected and they have their own little Silo in society and the Have Nots are treated as though them resorting to crime is because they people when the truth is when you are struggling to put food on the table and you are having wealth flaunted in front of you and you seeing Bentleys and all this extravagance in your face what do you expect people to do and so I think South Africa is in a new transition at the moment where it isn’t a racial issue it’s definitely going to be about how we deal with a economic inequality in the country and I’m so sorry I know you had a part two to the question um yes yes the Truth and Reconciliation committee I mean as with any conflict process the Truth and Reconciliation committee had incredible benefits and my family was one of the families that benefited from that process but it also had its flaws and so it’s very important when we’re looking at method IES and we say okay well that worked for you let’s bring it over here that we realize the inherent flaws that are there for every single system and one thing people tend to overlook with the Truth and Reconciliation committee is the fact that yes people were allowed to come seek amnesty to tell the truth and families were warded Justice and a sum of money but many people are under the conception that people were just you know jailed for their crimes and I hear that a lot especially when it comes to Eugene where people will be like yeah but you know like the TRC was so good because Eugene like look at him he’s such a great example I’m like the reason we pinpointing Eugene and not the many others that he worked alongside is because Eugene messed up in his testimony at the Truth and Reconciliation committee and had he told the whole truth and nothing but the truth he would have never been sentenced to those 212 years so when we’re looking at seeking truth and we looking at Seeking Justice it’s very important to realize that there is a balance and although the process was very effective and as effective as it could be I think if it was to be reimplemented into different societies it would need to be tweaked a little bit but I think it was a great process thank you you’re at the front yes oh and then John after your um my name is Nicole we met earlier it was lovely to meet you um my question was I was just sitting listening to your story and I thought wow like I’ve heard it I was lucky to hear it earlier as well but when was the first time that you decided to share your story what was your motivation to do it and like how was that very first experience what was that like because obviously you’ve done it so much and you’ve got to this stage I’d love to hear where that Journey began thank you thank you thanks Nicole so it’s actually very interesting so so what happened was I advocated for my dad’s U murderous parole and he gets it and all of a sudden my phone my Facebook my Instagram everywhere you could find me was blowing up like people wanted to find me and so for two weeks in a row like it was just crazy where I was doing an interview morning afternoon evening you know people were asking people were curious somewhere in the world and then I got to a point where I said I’m done I’m not doing any more interviews I’m not speaking about this anymore like this the chapter closed all the good things then I got an invite from one of our big chancellors in uh South Africa Professor Jonathan yansen and he invited me to speak at the University of the Free State and he said hey I understand you’re probably done like you don’t want to do this but as your final hurah just come and speak to the students at the University of the free states and I thought you know what yes I’m going to put it all detail here and if ever anyone wants to hear the story they can just get it from there so I went to the university and it was great and I shared my story much like I did today in a little bit of a longer format you know I hadn’t been trained to be concise at that time and I remember the Q&A session opening and the first person stood up and they said I was sexually assaulted by my uncle as a child and I’ve never told anyone and then the second I mean even speaking about it now it gives me chills and then the second person stood up and they shared their trauma and then the and then everyone in the room just started sharing and I started crying because I was like oh my God this is what people are feeling from the story and I had a battle with myself after that for a while and a part of me was like go do War correspondence that’s what you wanted to do you study to be a journalist but then I was I was like it would be selfish to not share this if this is how it moves and impacts people and so I remember when I started my career I’d always give myself these random time like time stamps of expiry I’m like yeah I’m going to do it for a year and then people are going to be sick of me and then a year would lapse and more people would want to hear and then I’d be like okay two more years then I’m done and now it’s been almost 10 but I’m thinking tin might be the one rude for me oh you Joan John you have the mic there I’m blown away for the second time today because I heard you on radio ear here and just have a question I wanted to ask you and the whole it’s the whole thing around forgiveness and particularly here in the north you know there have been two episodes that automatically came into my brain when I heard you speak earlier today one was uh Gordon Wilson at Anis Gillan and the other was uh Richard M and who’s from this city and not thing about forgiveness you know is there an expectation from that I think that if I can just get where I’m coming from in this is there an expectation from that because the fear with forgiveness is that somebody feels are getting off the hook it lets them away free how do you you know how do you have that unconditional forgiveness in a way that still expects somebody to have the responsibility of if if possible putting their action right yeah that’s a great question and one I think many postconflict societies struggle with is the fact that many times we are expected to forgive we are told to forgive and when all else failed we are ordered to forgive and I think that is such a dangerous dangerous thing to force feed people something they are not ready to partake in themselves so the reason I am so passionate about forgiveness and I use the term forgiveness because I have not found another word that encompasses the process is because the problem with rage and pain is whatever controls your emotions will control your life if someone can get you in a heightened State they have power over the decisions you’re going to make if you think about moments when you’ve been en Rag and the actions you’ve committed in those moments of rage and you think I don’t know what came over me it was like I was in a different world and so when you are dealing with someone who has caused you great harm and you are dealing with them from a Heights and States they have the power they are holding that control in their hands because they can say anything to you and they can manipulate you and Turn you and they know that they’ve got those switches your emotional buttons so the process of forgiving is saying I refuse to be controlled by this any longer I’m releasing this burden that was placed on my shoulder and I am letting it go and then you embark on a dance of forgiveness because unfortunately forgiveness is not a linear Road you don’t start here and end over there you are going to start here come here then go back then go here then go back then go here then go back and it becomes like a weird ping pong game but one day you wake up and you realize H I don’t feel that anymore actually no that’s not there and when you’re operating from a state of clarity I think you’re actually in a much more empowered position to seek the justice that you are looking for because you can articulate yourself better you can see through the manipulation from the person who’s causing a trauma and playing on your emotional triggers and so for me it is a very it’s a very nuan thing because forgiveness yes is about the other person in the fact that the other person has caused you pain but it is not about them at the same time it is about you being able to raise your kids without crying every night in bed it’s about you being able to raise your kids without replicating the trauma you experience onto them it’s about giving them a better shot at life than the one you had and the only way I have seen and I’m open to learning more from others but the only way I’ve seen that happen effectively is when we forgive what has happened to us and make peace with the fact that we cannot rewrite history but we can correct the future and so correction of the future is the second part which is yes I’ve forgiven you like I forgave you for punching me but I’m still calling the cops like great you know like that’s it’s got the two aren’t linked forgiveness is not in the absence of justice so yeah another question up here oh we’ll go we’ll go this we’ll go this way first yeah last two yeah last two thanks so much for such a inspiring talk um my question’s similar to John uh but slightly different um do you think forgiveness is dependent on some form of recognition or accountability or remorse from the person that’s harmed you um would your reaction or for did you move into a place of forgiveness um due to Eugene’s reaction when you met him or had you already moved into that place I’m just interested to hear your your thoughts thank you thank you so I had already moved into the place cuz that’s the issue with forgiveness right we use it so interchangeably with so many many different things as to reconciliation is forgiveness you know and the two are used so interchangeably whereas for me what I had to recognize and realize in my experience and journey was that I was not living in alignment with what my father would have wanted for me or any parent that loves their child would want for their child I was in a state of so much consistent mental anguish and pain that I had I still have ulcers today because I developed them then I still have health conditions today like under I changed my brain chemistry because I was diagnosed with clinical depression and the neurop Pathways in my brain changed so there were so many things that my body had to adapt to because I was in such rage that I had to unlearn and undo and work through and start the process of that healing and that forgiveness and so whether Eugene was apologetic or not the reason I had the capability to sit in front of him and give him the opportunity to be whatever he was is because my state of being was no longer dependent on him but the problem is so often when we in pain we seek validation and that validation unfortunately sometimes doesn’t come I remember confronting someone once and I said to them and this was really interesting it was before this whole you know forgiveness thing had happened and I said they’d really hurt me and I said to them you know what I want to tell you I forgive you and I remember him looking at me and he said what on Earth made you think I care about your forgiveness and I was like oh well D okay well I’m just going to pack this up and go home um and it was such a pivotal moment for me because I realized that I could hold a grudge and resentment towards this person Eugene my mother whatever whoever and that could control me for the rest of my life and I could wait for them to validate my reality and experience and what I’ve gone through or I can take it upon myself and say I trust myself I trust the know what I’ve experienced I trust the know that I’m stronger for it I trust the know that this is not going to be the defining moment in my life and I think the mistake we make in society is we especially in Conflict societies we identify people so heavily with their pain that is the victim of that is the victim of so we label and so then people have to walk through the world with the burden of being a victim what about them being a Victor oh gosh that person jeez man that’s the strongest person I know cuz they overcame this they gentleness is what makes them soft not brute strength and so I think it’s very important to just realize and come to the realization that we don’t need people to validate our pain we need to believe we are good enough to validate it for ourselves then we need to allow ourselves to cry experience feel and then let go of the burden that was never ours to carry great great answer the last question up here go ahead Candace thank you so much uh for sharing your stories today and I most grateful to you for being so brave and so strong and it um really strengthens my belief that we um have a lot to learn from young people from the conflict societies um interestingly throughout your talk I’ve been thinking of two people um one is your mother and the second is my own daughter because um I lost my husband and my son in a uh an attack by an internationally prescribed organization 11 years ago and my daughter was only 6 months at that time so my question to you was since you mentioned that um there you thought that maybe there was more space uh for emotions so my first question is that I as a mother what can I do to create that space for my daughter so that she can as you described very apply I could relate to it uh putting food on on the table clothes putting a roof over the uh head is sometimes uh it takes me over so what can I do as a mother to help her through the Journey of her emotions and the second thing is that because in our country we don’t have any uh transitional Justice systems uh the perpetrators were hanged by the military court so we never had an opportunity to talk to them we will never have so what would you suggest that I when do I bring on these conversations about those gruesome details to my daughter fonwood with the right time and uh how can I bring it up and how can I help her deal with it thank you wow uh firstly I want to say thank you for sharing that with all of us here and I’m so sorry for your loss and the fact that you’re even asking the question it means you’re on the right path right so when I was growing up and what I still wish for my mother today was I wish wish that she wasn’t so captive to her pain and if I had seen my mother heal to this day that’s the only thing I want for my mom I wanted to be happy I wanted to experience life but she’s built this Fortress of pain around herself and I think had I seen her model the fact that hey happens things suck and you are in pain and you allow to be in pain because what happened to us we didn’t deserve it but you know what we are going to make the most of it because they not here to do that and I’m going to heal and sometimes I’m going to break down in front of you and I’m going to cry and that’s okay because I think sometimes what we tend to do is we think of strength as this we have to just rush through and move through and um I I know if you can relate to this but it’s either you are destroyed by the pain or you become an overachiever because of the pain right so you’re either in one or two camps and I would say that it is all about embracing the emotional Journey so often I think what tends to happen with traumas We buried it so deep we’re afraid to even open that closet because we don’t know what’s going to come out from inside of us but when we start peeling back the layers and we give ourselves permission to feel cuz we we need to survive I don’t have time to feel this I don’t have time for the pain I don’t have time to mourn this and I think when you take yourself on this journey and you articulate to your daughter that hey like we’ve gone through some stuff but we’re going to look at us like we are surviving we’ve done stuff but we want to do more than survive we want to thrive so let’s unpack this together if you’re having a vulnerable moment and you need me to just listen and not talk tell me and I will be the person that you can speak to for that and if you need that you need to also find that in someone whether it’s a therapist whether it’s anyone because there’s so much power in verbalizing our pain and verbalizing our own stories and I can honestly say you’re obviously a great mother because you being here being so open being so receptive and even asking for this tells me you’re a great mother and when you heal yourself oh my God your daughter will thank you for and she will heal in tune thank you amazing how beautiful moment absolutely gorgeous um beautiful absolutely beautiful words inspirational uh words for us all I mean we we’re all from well we’re all living in Northern Ireland now we all have some experience of uh trauma or loss and I think we will all take away really uh I think a really profound message from today I know I will anyway and uh thank you so much for sharing your story with us and thank you for being so open and amazing Candace was born in South Africa 33 years ago I went to South Africa 33 years ago uh believe it or not it’s a strange story and I’m not going to boo you with the details of it but when I went there in 1991 it was to do work with the ANC and other then excluded parties obviously Mandela had been released the year before there was very questionable transition are there going to be negotiation is there not going to be negotiation what’s the shape of those negotiations going to be we all know the story and we’re familiar with the syndrome but one of the things that thec wanted to do was to have their regional and local activists trained to be ready possibly for elections when they happened and the strange thing was I was part of what was uh ridiculously called an international faculty uh that did some work with the national Democratic Institute from the United States but I was asked to bring polling boots because of course we have a factory in der in Springtown that makes these collapsible portable uh polling boots and so I brought polling boots to pre-democratic South Africa two polling boots from know so that they could be used as part of the training uh exercise for these various uh South African political AC in different parts uh of South Africa we heard not only did it bring Poland but it’s also brought ballot papers uh from here from Ireland North and South it would have been ballot uh unused ballot papers from European elections and local uh elections so many of thec activists were doing their first ballot experience using Irish ballot papers uh and the polling booth from here and that was as far back as uh 33 uh years ago and and and we know so many other changes uh since then one of the things I remember about the South African legislation because with different experiences and interactions between Northern Ireland and uh South Africa and Paul Arthur is here and he was part of a a trip that a number of us from a number of political parties uh did as well but the Truth and Reconciliation legislation has been mentioned the forward to that legislation or the long title of the bill but essentially the forward of the legislation had this great phrase about in order that we might and I was might leave the past behind us on an ethical basis and that’s the difference that was the conscious thought about dealing in this un imperfect process that was the Truth and Reconciliation Commission uh and of course when we listen to Candace’s story when she told us about the the call that her mother uh got from the chief prosecution’s office the issue there was they were being given a choice and Candace’s family made a choice Candace made her own choice then as we heard within the context of that uh visit that meeting that took place and of course the difficulty that many people have here with legislation that kicks in next week is the choice will will be gone it be denied and that’s uh a difference but this isn’t just about us it’s not about our uh situation we’ve heard powerfully uh emotive words from from Candace and we really really appreciate that and we know that Candace is not trying to set herself up as some sort of poster person for forgiveness as the gold standard uh or as anything else and John tonight mentioned Richard M and I’m very conscious Richard always talks about forgiveness as a gift that you give to yourself but he’s also very conscious about the fact that uh he respects the absolute Integrity of the position of those who have been denied the chance or the opportunity uh or the the reason uh to uh forgive or share forgiveness in the same way and so we need to remember that the Integrity uh of canas aor we also need to remember the Integrity of other stories and how people are coping with that as well and we heard that so powerfully uh from Candace as well this evening on behalf of the human Foundation I obviously want to thank Leona for chairing I want to thank Candace for what she uh has shared with us I want to thank uh the university Professor Hamber and Maliki for hosting us here this evening and of course for hosting uh the work of the peace Summit uh today I want to thank all of uh our partners in the peace uh Summit uh too many to list and I’m not going to uh go through uh the the list but it’s appreciated and of course uh the sponsors and we heard from the international fund uh for Ireland uh earlier uh another one of my experiences was to actually work withon in relation to the creation uh lobbying for the uh creation of the international fund for Ireland and one of the things that I learned from him in conversations was that the two most important things in politics and public life are the two things that politicians most forget people want to be asked and people want to be thanked so I hope you’re glad you were asked here uh this evening we’re certainly very glad the questions that you were able to ask and no doubt there are other questions you will want to ask but I want to thank uh all of you uh for your presence I hope uh all of you have been able to take uh something uh from it and certainly I’m sure Candace has been able to take something from her engagement with the young people uh today I had the opportunity to sit in and just a little bit uh of the peace on today didn’t want to be coming in older person looking like an invigilator or something uh in in in that sort of sense but the work uh of those uh young people and some of the issues that they were bringing up and it you know put the thought in my head these are young people who clearly know that my generation hasn’t educated them very well about the past their generation can educate us hugely well about the future and that’s the important thing and that’s what a peace process and a transition to peace uh is meant to be about it’s about that emancipation uh for other uh Generations so I thank people on behalf of the human Foundation I also want to thank uh our people in the human Foundation I want to thank Tim Atwood and Colette uh for their work throughout today and for this evening and all the work that has uh gone into it uh that work goes on just as the work of so many of you in this room in so many ways work that is all part of the aggregate of dialogue and engagement that has made up our peace process too often we make the mistake of forgetting that our peace process has really been a long slow murmuration with all sorts of involvements and movements and circl and at times it’s chaotic and then every now and again it takes on a shape and a configuration and it made something and then it appears to sink into chaos again and it comes back but it’s theum it’s many of the Partners uh who have worked and worked with the young people in this process who have been responsible uh for that sort of work so at times it’s easy for people to think it’s all the stuff that’s going on at the political level or around negotiating tables and all the rest of it’s all of the other unlikely and the difficult uh conversations that take place as well so I want to thank our partners in the peace Summit for all of their continuing work as well uh as well as everything they’ve done to help us to uh achieve now so with that I wanted you just to join again in particularly thanking uh Candace and I hope that the strength uh of your applause will radiate the appreciation uh that we all feel for what we have witnessed and been part of tonight thank you