As someone who got into journalism at the height of the war between Inkatha and the ANC in KwaZulu-Natal  in the late 1980s and early 1990s, in the course of my duties I saw hundreds of badly mutilated corpses almost every week.

Over time, it seemed I’d become impervious to emotional turmoil. I was finding it difficult to cry. Even when my father passed on I failed to cry. Some thought I was heartless. I realised I was a psychological mess...