Amy Biehl was an American graduate student on a Fulbright in Cape Town during the Apartheid. In 1993, she was here working in a Black-African township community to ensure the voting process would go well in the first democratic election. On the eve of the election she was murdered by members of the very township she was trying to help. The four men that murdered her went to jail to serve an 18 year sentence; they were released after 5.
The story of Amy Biehl is one of truth & reconciliation. After Apartheid the Truth & Reconciliation Committee was instated to create healing in a country that had been divided and broken through power run amok. While Apartheid and the Civil Rights era are very similar in the hate of a people based on race, there are several key differences. In South Africa Apartheid was created by the government. It began in 1948 and legislation followed banning mixed marriages, separate amenities, and eventually forced removal. The worst example of this forced removal occurred in District 6 with 60,000 people being forced out of their homes. (There is a museum I’m planning to visit that is dedicated to this piece of history).
Black-Africans and Coloureds were forced from their homes (located in beautiful areas of Cape Town) to townships located in the Cape Flats (behind Table Mountain). Today we went and visited the Gugulethu township, which is where Amy Biehl was murdered. As we drove, the city full of it’s high rises and nicely manicured lawns was replaced by tiny shacks pieced together with scraps of tin and wood with corrugated metal used as roofs.
Just a few miles from the city is a third world country. It’s 2011 and it amazes me that in a country as developed as South Africa there are hundreds of thousands of people living in such extreme poverty. How on earth can a country heal after years of this kind of injustice? Their land taken from them, the continued oppression, the forced segregation (which inadvertently continues to exist because of the structure designed forty years ago)? How can there be reconciliation?
There is a resiliency here and there are people that are trying to heal the wounds from the past. It takes time, but how much time I wonder? The reason the Amy Biehl story is so remarkable and a testament to the truth and reconciliation project is because of her parents. When her four killers came before the board to determine further sentencing, Amy’s parents were there. At the trial they openly forgave these men. They recognized that Amy’s death was more complicated with a system of oppression driving these men to take their daughters life because of the hate the color of her skin represented. Does this make it right? No. But her parents were willing to give these men a second chance at life, and incidentally two of the men released work for the Amy Biehl foundation.
These thoughts are just the cliff notes. They don’t do justice to what I’m really trying to say…but maybe they’ll spark a conversation between us when I return.
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