Best 6 quotes of Pumla Gobodo-madikizela on MyQuotes

an act of forgiveness sets the victim apart from the perpetrator, who failed to act humanly towards the victim at the time he committed his crime.

Forgiveness does not overlook the deed. It rises above it.

For perpetrators, when they apologize and experience remorse, it gives them a chance to reclaim their own humanity. Some rise to the moral challenge. Others of course don't care, and they continue acting with contempt.

Perpetrators who receive the gift of forgiveness are given a chance to change

Perpetrators of human rights violations redefine morality and start believing that they can commit systematic murder and other atrocities "for the greater good." The distance between evil and sickness is not that great. The evil component of crimes against humanity is the moral failing. The sickness aspect is the defect in perspective, the distortion in mental processing that both precedes the evil and is intensified by it.

There are many who find it hard to embrace the idea of forgiveness. And it is easy to see why. In order to maintain some sort of moral compass, to hold on to some sort of clear distinction between what is depraved but conceivable and what is simply off the scale of human acceptability, we feel an inward emotional and mental pressure not to forgive, since forgiveness can signal acceptability, and acceptability signals some amount, however small, of condoning. There is a desire to draw a line and say, "Where you have been, I cannot follow you, Your actions can never be regarded as part of what it means to be human." Yet not to forgive means closing the door to the possibility of transformation.