SHE dazzles the nation every weekend with her wild and wonderful hairstyles.

But for Strictly judge Motsi Mabuse, styling her hair is about more than just showcasing her glossy locks.

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The 41-year-old, who suffered racism as a young dancer in South Africa, says it has helped free her from the oppression she faced growing up under Apartheid.

Speaking ahead of this weekend’s show, Motsi admits those experiences still affect her now, saying: “If I’m totally honest, you carry it all your life.

“As a child, you question yourself. Then you are not told to really believe yourself because every time somebody tries to teach you to believe in yourself, another person tears you down.

“So even things that I’m really loving to celebrate now, which seem so little to other people, like celebrating my own hair — the way my hair grows, what I can do with my hair — it’s something as a child I didn’t see.

“It was always more like, ‘Hide your hair, get your hair under control’.”

The mum-of-one says celebrating her hair on the BBC dancing show is helping her to heal those past traumas.

She said: “For me it’s like, ‘Oh, my hair, it’s repairing and healing all of those things that you discover as you go on.”

Motsi’s hairstyles are so popular that fans have even made an Instagram account dedicated to them, with one viewer calling for her hair to have its “own show”.

So far this series, she has already sported impressively sculpted topknots as well as long, blue braids.

She says: “It is different every week and it’s mostly just working with my hair stylist and looking at what we can do.

“It takes the whole day. But I wanted to indulge the feeling to see what is possible for my sort of hair.”

Showbusiness is a long way from Motsi’s earlier dreams of becoming a lawyer.

She first pursued law at the University of Pretoria, before turning her attention to dancing and moving to Nuremberg, Germany, at 18.

In 2003, she married dance partner Timo Kulczak, 45, but they divorced after 11 years, in 2014.

A year later she struck up a romance with dancer Evgenij Voznyuk, 38, and they married in 2017 and had a daughter the following year.

Between her TV commitments, the couple run a dance school together.

But Motsi, who was speaking at the…