‘I remember the story in South Africa of a mother at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearing about her son's murder. The police officer who had ordered the brutal killing was there, shamefacedly listening to the details of what he and his colleagues had done.
At the end the room was quiet.
The chair of the commission, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, asked the woman if she had anything to say to the man who had killed her son.
She responded:
"I am very full of sorrow. So I am asking you now - come with me to the place where he died, pick up in your hands some of the dust of the place where his body lay, and feel in your soul what it is to have lost so much. And then I will ask you one thing more. When you have felt my sadness, I want you to do this. I have so much love, and without my son, that love has nowhere to go. So I am asking you - from now on, you be my son, and I will love you in his place." And the policeman did become as her son.’
He will never retire ........
