Ep 18: The Top Five Tips For Harnessing in Power
With Candice Mama
“ So many people are afraid of taking risks. And they are so afraid of betting on themselves just in case they fail. But I've come to realise that people aren't afraid of failure, people are afraid of failing in front of other people. And I think once you take that out of the equation, and you're like, you know what, even if I do fail, I would rather be the person in the ring, fighting for what I want, and falling a few times and stumbling, then be the person in the audience judging and pointing and saying how that person could have done it better. So, I think when you take a risk on yourself, you realise it's really about choosing you and choosing the life you were destined to live. ”
Candice Mama Top Five Tips For Harnessing in Power
1. Overcoming difficulties
2. Using pain as fuel
3. Taking a risk on yourself
4. Listening to your intuition
5. Choosing you
TIME STAMP SUMMARY
01:07 How trauma shapes us
02:51 The story of forgiveness
11:32 Failure is a lesson
16:15 Summary of the Top Five Tips
Where to find Candice?
LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/candice-mama
Website http://www.candicemama.com/
Who is Candice Mama?
My name is Candice Mama, I was born in 1991 in South Africa a country that was gripped by the grossly violent and oppressive system of Apartheid and this is my story.
In September 2014 , The National Prosecuting Authority reached out to my family to enquire about whether or not we would like to meet Eugene de Kock ( a former South African Police colonel, torturer, and assassin, active under the apartheid government. Nicknamed “ Prime Evil” and sentenced to 212 years in prison under 89 charges). As many would imagine, it wasn’t a decision we came to without many dinner-table discussions and some trepidation from members of the family.
We agreed to schedule our meeting for the following Tuesday. In the days to come, a sense of self-reflection enveloped me. My dad, Glenack Masilo Mama, was brutally killed in a vicious and unjust time in our country’s history. My memories of him were nothing but compilations of different people’s stories and pictures we collected over time. However, the one thing I knew for sure about my father was that he had been tortured and then burnt to death by a man named Eugene de Kock. I went on to read numerous articles and books about the man dubbed Prime Evil and his legacy, which was that of being the face and embodiment of an unjustifiable system of hate and oppression. Growing up in a house where reading and introspection were encouraged allowed me to be able to contextualise my dad’s killing. Which, in my mind, made his death mean something.
He died fighting a system and wanting a different country for my brother and myself, which we are extremely fortunate to now be living in. This made me realise I couldn’t hate De Kock because love and hate cannot operate in the same space. If I wanted to resent him, I would never be able to fully enjoy the life my dad and so many others willingly or unwillingly died for.
He had robbed me of a father and I had subconsciously given him sixteen years of my anger, anguish, sleepless nights and bouts of severe depression. One day I just refused for him to take away my joy and enthusiasm for life any more than he already had. So I did what I had to do and I forgave him.
At the age of Twenty- Three , here I am with my family ready to finally meet the man who took away not only my father but so many others – friends, husbands and sons. I was surprised at how I froze and allowed my mum to lead the line of questioning until I became present again. With every question asked and every answer given, my empathy grew for this complete stranger who spoke so sincerely that I couldn’t help but let my defences down. I looked on in awe as I witnessed myself crying not because of who I had lost, but because I saw a man who was created by a regime and who took the fall for a government. A man who lost so much more than I would bear had I been in the same situation.
I left having felt like I had just been lucky enough to meet one of the most brilliant thinkers of my time and someone who was also a victim to a system of indoctrination. I had forgiven him then, but having met him, I can say I have been changed by this encounter forever.
A few days later I went on to write an open letter to our Judicial system with the following excerpt:
“The African National Congress’s strategic objectives are to build a united non-racial, non-sexist and prosperous society. I believe in order to do that and fulfil the vision of the greats like Nelson Mandela, we have to go through the reconciliation process as a country, because there can be no progress without reconciliation. As was the mantra within the struggle: “The main enemy is the system and those who continue to support the system.”
Therefore, should we not extend a courtesy of fairness to a man who was ordered to commit those atrocities in the same way we extended a courtesy of fairness to those who ordered him to commit them?
This doesn’t make Eugene de Kock a martyr in any way, shape or form. It does, however, mean we remove the venom in our system as a country to move forward uncrippled by the past.
As former statesman Nelson Mandela said: “Forgiveness liberates the soul.” In favour of Eugene’s parol which he later received. A few things shifted inside me when I sat face to face with my father’s killer and the most profound was that when I forgave Eugene I suddenly realised it had been me who was in prison the entire time.
Forgiveness taught me that it is rarely ever about the perpetrator it is about freeing ourselves from the hold the perpetrator has over us, it is not about forgetting it is about removing the emotional attachment we have to the event. Forgiveness is choosing to free ourselves from our own mental prisons.
I wish you all the freedom of forgiveness
