The Leadership Power of Forgiveness with Candice Mama

Foreign Imagine standing face to face with a man who murdered your father and choosing forgiveness. That single decision launched a global movement. And today on the Enlightened Executive, you'll meet the woman behind it. I'm Susan Drumm and this is the Enlightened Executive. Each week we explore strategies to help you lead with more clarity, resilience and impact. I've coached CEOs and C suite teams for nearly 20 years and I know leadership growth starts with personal evolution. On this show, I talk with top experts and conscious leaders who are redefining how we lead at work and in life. If you're ready to uplevel your leadership, you're in the right place. Today I'm joined by Candace Mama, a woman whose leadership is rooted in one of the most powerful forces we have. Forgiveness. Named by Vogue as one of the world's most inspiring women alongside Michelle Obama and Malala, Candace has transformed personal tragedy into a global mission for peace and reconciliation. Her story is captured in the documentary It's a Pleasure to meet you which follows her courageous decision to forgive her father's killer, an apartheid assassin. And she's the author of of forgiveness redefined. A TEDx speaker and the co CEO of M, an organization impacting communities across 52 countries. Her work spans post conflict societies, indigenous mentorship and leadership development. So welcome Candice. I'm so excited to have you on the show.

Susan, it's such a pleasure. We've been trying to make this happen for a while.

I know finally, finally we are making it. Well, I, for me, good things happen.

To those who wait.

So I'm, I'm thrilled and I know it's been like on both our ends, it's been crazy. But anyway, so now we get a chance to talk about. I think the most important place to start is where your journey began, where this all started. Your life, what has become your life's powerful work. How did this all get kicked off? Wow.

It's really hard to begin at a particular point with my career without actually going into who I am as a person. So I'm going to start you from, you know, back when I was a baby and how I ended up here. And I'll make it very succinct for the audience and everyone listening. So I was born in South Africa and if you know anything about South Africa, you know about our deeply troubled past with apartheid. And unfortunately, when I was nine months old, my father was brutally murdered by an apartheid assassin by the name of Eugene de Kock. And so growing up I carried so much Resentment. And I was so, so angry and incredibly bitter. And I remember when I was around 16 years old, I was hospitalized, and everyone in my family was so confused because I was so healthy. I was a star athlete. And it just didn't make sense for someone my age to be getting hospitalized for symptoms that were similar to a heart attack. And so I remember the doctor holding me back and saying, you know, I need to speak to your mom before we can discharge you. And my mom came into the room, and he looked at us with such earnest concern, and he said, I have never seen stress symptoms so severe in someone your age. And he continued with the words, your body's killing you, and if you don't change what you're doing, you are going to die. And I remember those words really hitting me. And a part of me thought, you know what? I'm not super keen on life at the moment, so this might not be the worst outcome. But the more I thought about it was the more I realized that the thing that was killing me was the thing that killed my father. And even though I didn't have connection to him, he didn't know who I was, and yet I was giving him so much power over my life. And so fast forward to the age of 24, and I've managed to survive, and I'm thriving. And I remember visiting my mom, and she told me she'd gotten a call from the national prosecuting authorities, and they wanted to know if we would like to meet my dad's killer. And so the day came, and we'd all decided that we were going to go see him. And so as we sat, it was a table, kind of like visiting an old relative who has a beautiful, long dining table. It felt very eerie. And I was sitting at the end of the long side of the table. Then it was my younger brother, my older brother, and then it was my mom, and there was my grandfather. And we finished the one side of the table, and to my right was the shorter end of the table. And the priest was sitting next to me, and next to him was an empty chair. And then the rest of the seats were taken by the warden of the prison and security guards. And so as we were sitting there, they said, okay, Eugene's going to come in any moment now. And for context, Eugene De Kock was sentenced to 212 years in prison on 89 charges of murder. And at one point in history, he was known as the most dangerous assassin and the most, you know, wanted person just because of what he had done. And so as he sat down, Eugene. And we started the dialogue. First question was, what? What did he do to my dad? Because at that time, we didn't have that much information on how my dad had died. And so he explained to us that he had actually set up an ambush for my father. And when my father was driving past him, he had secured four men on either side of the bridge. And they emptied out the magazine cartridges on my dad as he was looking from the top of the bridge, and he realized the car wasn't coming to a stop. He ran down the bridge, and he emptied out his magazine cartridge. And then he doused my dad in fuel, and he set him alight. And so that was the first time we found out the details of my dad's murder. And so the conversation continued. And eventually, you know, my mom said, I forgive you. And my brother said, I forgive you. And when it got to me, I said, you know, Eugene, 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, Susan, for the first time, he broke character. He looked away, and he wiped the side of his eye because a tear had come down. And he looked at me and said, in all these visits, that is one question I've hoped no one would ever ask me. And he said, when you've done the things I've done, how do you forgive yourself? And I just broke down. I just started to cry and cry and cry. And what I realized in that moment was that there was nothing he could say to take away my pain, and there was nothing I could say to take away his. And so as that moment wrapped up, I got up first and I walked around. And as he was still seated, I said, eugene, would you mind if I gave you a hug? And he looked at me confused. And he got up, and he's a very tall man, and he towered above 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 the woman you've become. And in that moment, I went my way. I left him in prison. He wasn't eligible for parole, but I decided to write an open letter to the government, and it was published in all our major newspapers. And he ended up getting parole. And so my life changed in that instant, because so many people were like, why would you forgive him? How did this happen? And that's really how my career started. And I realized how many people were in so much pain because of the hurts that others have inflicted upon us that we have made our own personal stories? And that's how you and I met. It's me speaking at one of your incredible events.

Yes, yes. Such an incredible story. And I have so many questions. I have a few questions because I imagine people are having questions too. So what did you, first of all, going back, what did you do differently at age 16 that had you get to this point where at 24 you could go give your dad's killer a hug? What was that transformation?

I want to be very honest. They didn't start with forgiveness for me. It started with anger. I knew that I was giving this person control over my life and he had deprived me of the central figure. And yet he was also depriving me of the joys and the happiness and just living my own life fulfilled. And so initially it was vengeance. I was, I am going to show him that I'm going to be amazing and I'm going to thrive and I'm going to do so well. But as I was going through it, I just started studying and I started really looking into this man and looking into my country's history and gaining an understanding and what that did for me and what everyone can do when they start looking at their own pain is when you realize that the person that you are putting rent free in your mind and that you are seeing as this vicious perpetrator, when you start to realize that it actually had nothing to do with you and it had everything to do with them, it is so much easier to free yourself because you deserve the freedom that they attempted to take from you.

Wow. Wow. You do deserve that freedom.

Right.

And it's sort of like not only did they do harm to you in a way of taking your father, but they're continuing to do that through your lifetime. But you're allowing that. And that's the hardest thing to see. Right. You actually do have a choice. Do you want him to continue, in a way, killing you? That's essentially right.

And.

And you have the choice in that. And so. So it started with that and, and as it progressed, maybe say, a bit more than. How do you get to a level where it sounds like all your family was able to get to such a place of forgiveness?

Absolutely. And what you said is so important. And it also feels very unfair because you think to yourself, but I didn't do this to me, so why should I take it upon myself to heal myself or forgive this person? And I think what the tool really is, is that when you forgive, you are giving yourself the benefit of living a fulfilled life. You are taking back your emotional power. You are taking back the life that you, this person, or this thing, tried to take away from you. Because what I try to explain is that the first time trauma happens to us, it's like when you're in a car crash. So it's the moment of impact. However, when we are reliving that story in our minds, then we continue to re traumatize ourselves and give away our power through it. Because now we're living in a story that doesn't belong to us. And I think that's what my family came to, is that our story became so defined by this one moment that we were not free. And so we started hurting one another because we were so hurt by this person. And the only way we could break that cycle was to say, what am I benefiting from my victimhood? And I know that sounds like a shocking statement, but it is true. There is benefit to victimhood. And I think once you realize what the benefit is and what you're missing out because you're not allowing yourself to look at any other narrative is that, yes, the benefits include people will feel sorry for you. People will excuse your horrible behavior and say, oh, don't mind Candace. It's because her dad was killed. People will give you excuse after excuse for you running your life down the train, and you will have power. Because people often, when we think of victimhood, we don't think about power, but the power of being a victim and adopting that narrative. And there's a difference between being victimized and living as a victim. And when you live as a victim and you adopt that story, what you really do is you take the power in the room. Because, Susan, when you come to me as a friend and you say, oh, Candace, I'm going through this awful time in my life, da, da, da, da. I get to take the power and say, yes, Susan, you know, I wish I had a dad that I could complain about things with. And immediately, what does that make you feel?

Oh, my God, right?

I mean, it's not about me. It's about this person. I need to give them energy. And you don't even have time to think because you're already feeling so guilty, you shut down. And immediately, what you want to do, you want to come to my aid, right? And so when you are victimized, you get the choice during your healing journey to say, I am not a victim to this. I am a survivor of this and that little paradigm shift allows you to take back your power and it allows you to take the lesson from the pain without taking the pain with you through your life.

Absolutely, absolutely. It's so powerful. And I want to bring. Bring this powerful story also into the workplace for a moment and just give an example where, you know, it was literally just last week I worked with an executive team and we did an exercise. They were in the process of leading a pretty big change effort in their organization. And I had them go through a process where they each identified one time in their life, preferably a business or business like situation, in which they essentially got screwed over. Right? Trust was broken, they were betrayed. Right. They had a bad manager or colleague threw them under the bus, whatever it may be, and really tell the story from that perspective because they're sort of used to that. And then I asked them to take that same story and tell it from a responsible point of view that they were. And this is kind of crazy and this is not in your circumstance, but 100% responsible for what happened, right? Through actions, non actions and interpretations and really adopting a belief that there was always something I can do to affect a situation. Now that little mindset shift, they could start to see this point that you're mentioning that, that there are actually payoffs to telling the victim story, right? And the payoffs are short term in nature, but you pay a long term price and certainly you had evidence of the long term price that it was causing for your health. That is definitely one the health. You keep telling victim stories, you're going to keep having like kind of that, that health reverberation. But the long term prices that you pay also in the workplace, no growth, it's somebody else's fault, right? I don't have to change, I don't have to do the work. But telling the responsible side of the story, the. There's also payoffs, but those are longer term in nature, but there's prices too, which are short term. Like I have to admit that maybe I did have input to this that I could have chosen differently. Right. And if you could take the blame out of it of yourself and others and you. The responsible mindset is like, I believe there's always something I can do to affect a situation, right. It's more, gosh, the peace that they had from telling that version of the story, you could feel it in the room. And I imagine that that's the piece that you brought into this room with your dad's killer that was beyond healing and so inspirational and so you take this. I'd love to hear what you think about this as, like, transforming it into leaders and hear a bit more about how you've leveraged this story to create more forgiveness and healing in the world.

Absolutely. And I love your story because I think that exercise is so pivotal for all of us in every sector of our lives, because so often we don't realize that human beings are just a collection of stories. And those stories, more often than not, are the stories we telling ourselves about ourselves. And once we can change that narrative to say, you know what? Just because my mother said I'm not good enough, or my dad once said I'll never amount to anything, or whatever, that core wounding is because all of us operate from some sort of a system that we adopted, and we say to ourselves, oh, the adults in the room told me this. Well, my experience during this. This time in my life told me this narrative that people will always disrespect me, that people will always abandon me, that they'll always be constantly using the term always when we having our own internal dialog. And the truth is, it is so much harder to actually say, wait, I'm stopping the tape, and I'm actually going to rewrite it. And that's what's so powerful about what you are allowing your clients to do. And so I've got a similar thing, but in a different way, and I call it creating your rule book. And so what I help people do. Is anyone in the audience listening? You can do this today if you want to, and just relax. Go into a quiet space, play your favorite music, light candles, if that's your thing, and just get a journal. And on that journal, just randomly write lines down the page, and at the top, write headlines in each column. And the first headline is the pain. So what is the pain story? And so it could be your. And go as deep as you want, you know, could be your deepest, earliest memory of pain. It could be a more recent one. It could be, you know, during lockdown. It could be whatever. And you write your pain, and you really go into it, and you say, oh, this person left me. And then in the next column, I want you to write the emotions, the true anger, the pain, the frustration, everything you can cuss, you can do whatever. And then on the other side, I want you to write the lesson. What was the lesson that you learned from this moment in time? And as you write this lesson, I want you to think of, how did you overcome this thing, this insurmountable thing that had you crippled and Made you think that you could not move on after this very moment? How did you actually move on? How did you get on 10 years from that moment? How did you get on five years, five months, whatever it is for you. And I want you to write down the strategies you used. And as you look back and you reflect back on your moments of pain, the biggest thing I want you to realize is every single thing that you thought was going to destroy you, that was going to annihilate your business, that is going to break you as a human being didn't. And so you're still here. So you must be stronger than you are giving yourself credit for. And sometimes it takes those simple moments of reflection to realize, oh, actually, I've overcome a lot. I've done things, and I'm actually pretty good at being resilient. I don't need a guru outside of me to tell me I'm brilliant. I've just. I can just look within and realize that I am my own guru. And I think that's the most important thing where when you are recrafting your story, you need to build trust with your own internal voice. And you need to say, hey, the story has been great. The fact that I've told myself I'll never find love because I'm unlovable, this has been an awesome story for me. It has helped me, you know, really push through my career. It's helped me achieve certain goals. But today, I don't need that story anymore. And my new story is I've done everything I've wanted to do, and now I'm ready for love. And love finds me in every place, even when I'm not looking for it. And you just love that story as if it's your reality. And see what happens. Play it as a game in your mind. You don't need to be committed to your new story. Just use it as a game. And just think of it like, huh, yeah, I am quite lovable. I am quite cool. I'm quite smart. And just start speaking to yourself in a more compassionate way and in a more forgiving way as you're doing these exercises. And I think what ends up happening, Susan, is all of us realize that we can actually trust our own internal voice. And we don't always need people outside of ourselves to tell us what we need to do to heal, because the answer is within us. The problem is we're so used to silencing our own voices that we don't even hear when we're giving ourselves solutions to our problems.

Yeah. Yeah, What a powerful exercise. And what I also like and what you're doing is this ability to really have a moment to express it. I'm wondering if you did any expression work to get through the pain that you were experiencing, and what did that look like for you?

I think my version of expression has always been in writing, so I've always journaled, and I've always been curious about life, about people, movies. And I think what I always realized was so often in life, we expect our lives in particular to be so exceptional from every other human life. And I think it's a beautiful thing to think you're special, because even though no human being is going to say, I don't think I'm special, but all of us do, and we know it. In the negative moments where you say, oh, my gosh, this. This is never going to end, like, this is the worst thing that could have ever happened. And you're like, seriously, in the history of all humanity, what you're going through right now, of all things, you have making ourselves main characters in our stories, which is so important, but it has to be health, and it has to be within the context of just looking at other people. And the reason I love movies is because our favorite movies are the ones where there's a hero and the hero achieves something great. And what we don't realize is that all of us are living our own hero's journey and those moments where we're looking at it and we think, I'm never going to come back from this. This is over for me. It's the part of the movie that we love. The moment where you see the hero, you know, going out and drinking and just like. And you're like, get yourself together, man. And then all of a sudden, you see that story and paradigm shift within the hero, and they shift around their reality because in their minds, they are now realizing that they can actually do more than they gave themselves credit for. And so I think it's a great exercise that when we are in these midst of troubling times or difficult moments in our business, we realize that bashing yourself is not the best tool forward. Telling yourself that what you were told when you were 3, 4, 5, 6, whatever age it was, or that your divorce means that you're a terrible person, or that your business shutting down means you're never going to succeed. When we leave these stories behind and we just realized, hey, all of us are here for a split second in human history, and all we have to do is. Is survive daytoday Nothing is that deep, nothing is that serious that you're currently doing. What is serious is how are you talking to yourself? How are you treating yourself? Are you saying good things in your brain? Because that is the most talk you're going to ever have in your life. And you want to make that movie a beautiful movie. And I'm not saying don't feel things. I feel anger all the time. I feel sadness all the time. I express my emotions, but it's about saying, I am angry right now. I am angry at the situation. I am angry at how I feel about this, but I am not an angry person. And I think sometimes we identify so strongly with what we feel, as I feel like a failure. I am a failure. I feel like I failed at something versus I am a failure. And I think those little shifts in the way we talk to ourselves, I think makes the biggest difference in change.

Yes. The I am statement is one of the most powerful statements there. Right. And I love that distinction that you made between feeling emotions in the moment. They're supposed to be like clouds that pass by. And yet as human beings, we want to hold on to that weather or we. We don't want to, but we do. Right. And. And so I. I talk about it in terms of patterns, and what I see is people getting stuck. You know, feeling anger is not a bad thing. It's. It's important to know that a boundary has been crossed. Right. But it's supposed to be there for you to take different action, not to live in the anger story. And when you get stuck in the pattern of anger, that's when you're doing harm to you and others around you, and you're not using leveraging. The emotion, which is what it's there to provide for you is kind of a reason to take action or a reason to make a shift. And I think it's that sort of stubborn holding onto something and then making it into this drama that doesn't need to be there. Because ultimately, as we talked about, the real harm it's doing is to you, to your health, and getting really clear of, like, what are. What are the messages that you're telling yourself? Are they beautiful messages or harmful messages?

Absolutely. And also realizing that emotions aren't enemies. I think we villainize certain emotions and we glorify others. And it makes complete sense because we want joyful expressions of ourselves. We want to be happy, we want to feel ecstatic about things. But anger has a space, you know, frustration has a space. And we don't grow when we are not uncomfortable. I've never been. Maybe you have, Susan, but I've never been so happy in my life that I thought, I'm so happy right now, I'm going to change everything about my reality. You know, it's only when I'm so uncomfortable and I've. I feel so frustrated with my environment that I'm like, I've got to change this. I'm leaving, I'm going on holiday, or I'm, like, moving to a different country or whatever it is. And I think we need to just look at those moments and those expressions of emotion as positive things. It's just about learning how you express those emotions. So if you're angry and that anger means other people around you get harmed, that's a problem. But if you are angry and you know that in the state, I'm going to be my most productive at a boxing class, go box or. Or learn techniques whereby you know that you can feel that in the most positive direction. And then I think it becomes an incredible tool to play with emotion instead of allowing emotion to control you. Yes, yes.

And so how taking this work then out into the world, you spoke to EO Entrepreneurs Organization, which is how we met. What is your message to leaders regarding these topics? And how can we as leaders, whether entrepreneurs or in the corporate world, really embody what you're trying to teach?

Absolutely. I think so often we think of our emotions as separate from the world that we occupy. Right. So we've got a work version of ourselves, we've got a home version, and that's completely fine. However, the most important thing to realize is that the most authentic version of you needs to show up in all these environments. And by authenticity, I'm not saying come with boxer shorts to work. You know, I think that's what people think. They're like, oh, I can't be my most authentic self. But the truth is, what I mean by authentic is the fact that when you start becoming your own best friend by recognizing your shortfalls, by recognizing your insecurities, by recognizing that failure is not permanent and that you are not the first person in history to fail, you are not the first person in history to, you know, lose something, to be in pain. And therefore, it's a collective experience. And that experience can be something that fuels you into the new version of yourself if you just listen. Because our bodies will tell us the message. We just so busy avoiding ourselves that we will do anything but confront ourselves. You know, there's this brilliant quote that goes. It's amazing how far we will go to get away from ourselves. And I, once we start to realize that there is no such thing as a final destination, there's no final pit stop to your dreams. You are always living it. And if you want to see what destruction does to the human body when you don't have healthy emotions is look at certain leaders across the world, how they lash out. They have no emotional self regulation because their whole regulation is based on the world around them. And I think the most powerful. Exactly. And I think the most powerful thing any leader can do is learn how to control your own emotions. Because whatever controls your emotions will control your life. And that's what I've learned working in conflict zones. That's what I've learned working with leaders under pressure is that if someone sitting across from you negotiating something extremely important, not just to you, maybe to a region or whatever, and they know your weakness is maybe calling you stupid, or I'm just using a really silly example, but calling you stupid or speaking about your wife or speaking about something in a particular way and they know it's going to cause you to start to spiral, they are going to do that purposefully to make sure they get the best outcome from the negotiation. But if you sit there and you are confident in who you are and you trust your own story and you trust yourself, people can say whatever they want about you. But you do not need to buy into the narrative because the only time a story has power is when you say it does. And so if someone says something about you that's not true, you're like, cool, sorry you feel that way. So now moving on to what we here to discuss this. And so I think that is the most important thing. Just learning that your biggest superpower in this world is your own emotional self regulation.

I love it. So good. I can imagine one last question for you, that people want to know why you wrote for the release of this killer. Like why not just say I forgive you, you forgive me and walk away? What? What had you do that and what did you get by doing that?

That is an incredibly important question. And I think for anyone who's thinking she is insane, I can completely see your vantage point and where you're coming from. What I realized with the complexity of my country's history, as well as my own family history, was that by keeping Eugene in prison, within that confine of apartheid in which he committed the atrocities that he did, he was not a rogue agent. He was a man who was a decorated police sergeant who was working under commands. And when I realized that the man who ordered my father's killing received the Nobel Peace Prize, and the man who pulled the trigger was sentenced to lifetime in prison. To me, that didn't feel like justice. And so from my experience of him, I had to trust my own intuition and say, if I do this and it actually is done, I have to claim ownership over this. Because if he goes out into the world and causes more harm and pain, it's got nothing to do with him. Everyone's going to say to me, you did this. If you had done this, this would not have happened. And so I had to be so sure about my convictions. He was a remorseful man, and that what happened was in that context that I could do it. And so I think that's what it comes to, which is when you know yourself and you trust your own guidance, then you can make those kind of decisions. And thankfully, he's been good and I hear from him now and again. So it's. Yeah, it's been good.

That's wonderful. That's wonderful. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show today, Candace. It's been an amazing conversation and you are one incredible human being. So I'm so glad you're here in the world to be out there with this message that is so needed at this time in our life, in our history. Where can people find out more about you and your work?

Thank you, Susan. And you know, I feel the same about you and the work you do. I just find you to be so inspiring. And I think the world needs more people like you that take their genius and they allow others to find their own. So I love the work you do. And I just want to say the reason I'm sparkling with glossy, you know, I'm so glossy and shiny right now is because it is sweltering in Ibiza. So please do. If you are watching this on YouTube, I did use powder, but unfortunately, even powder doesn't work in this weather. Where can people me? You can, you know, look on my website at www.candacemama.com and on LinkedIn. I love connecting with people on LinkedIn and that's where I will respond to your DMs or whatever it is that you know you want to ask or if you have a thought or a very considered opposition to anything I've said. I love that kind of conversation. So please do DM me. I love it.

Great. Awesome. So inspired by your story and inspired by you who are listening and took the time to hear about Candice Story, she brings grace, courage and emotional intelligence into every room she enters. So let's all take an example and lead the way. Hope you enjoyed today's episode, and I'd like to point you to the next important step. Hit the subscribe button to get notified when we release new content. I'll see you on the next episode of the Enlightened Executive.

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