US activist’s death echoes Biehl’s
WHEN former president Nelson Mandela accepted the Congressional Gold Medal in the US in 1998, he had this to say about American Fulbright scholar Amy Biehl, who was murdered in Gugulethu outside Cape Town, by an angry mob of protesters, shouting anti-white slogans on August 25, 1992:
“She made our aspirations her own and lost her life in the turmoil of our transition, as the new South Africa struggled to be born in the dying moments of apartheid. Through her, our peoples have also shared the pain of confronting a terrible past, as we take the path towards the reconciliation and healing of our nation.”
Had Mandela been alive today, he would have echoed the same sentiments about Heather Heyer, 32, killed when a right-winger drove his car into a crowd of protesters after a white nationalist and neo-nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, last week.
This Friday marks the 25th anniversary of Biehl’s death. She had been working at the Community Law Centre at the University of the Western Cape and, as she drove a friend home to Gugulethu, youths were throwing stones at vehicles driven by white people. She was pulled from her car and stoned to death.
Many South Africans who still recall the pain and sadness of that episode would have made instinctive comparisons with what happened to Heyer at Charlottesville last week. Heyer, who worked as a paralegal at a local law firm, was killed in a terror attack by white nationalists, one of whom rammed his car into a crowd of anti-fascist protesters, killing Heyer and sending many bodies flying through the air.
Both Biehl and Heyer were devoted to the cause of justice and equal opportunity for people of all communities. They took active roles in their respective campaigns. Their deaths made international headlines, with political and religious leaders calling for calm at such senseless and wanton violence.
What stunned and even inspired South Africans after Biehl’s death was the remarkably compassionate way in which her grieving parents, Linda and Peter Biehl, reacted.
They showed no signs of bitterness, announcing that they forgave the men who killed Amy.
It was a gesture that had great symbolic significance for South Africans and played a critical role in pioneering a spirit of forgiveness and reconciliation.
The four killers were all sentenced to 18 years in prison for Biehl’s killing and later applied for amnesty, which was supported by the Biehl family.
One of them was Mzikhona Eazi Nofemela, who said he was initially against going to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to give testimony, believing it was a “sell out”.
“But then I read in the press that Linda and Peter had said that it was not up to them to forgive. It was up to the people of South Africa to learn to forgive each other. I decided to go and tell our story and show remorse ... I wanted to say in front of Linda and Peter, face-to-face, ‘I am sorry, can you forgive me?”
Amy Biehl’s death was not in vain. Nor was Heather Heyer’s, whose mother, Susan Bro, pleaded with mourners to honour the memory of her daughter by channelling “anger into righteous action”.
The lessons from their legacies are worth heeding in our country. It is time for healing and real reconciliation. Let’s put hatred and bigotry behind us.