Yet mercy is exactly what Peni, Manqina and Biehl's other killers—Mzikhona Nofemela, 26, and Vusumzi Ntamo, 25—are now seeking. The four men want amnesty under a 1995 law enacted by South Africa's newly democratic government to heal the wounds of the nation's bloody, racist past. Remarkably, Peter and Linda Biehl, both 54, had come not to thwart their appeal but to witness it in the name of their daughter, an outspoken advocate of multiracial democracy since her college days. The Biehls have made her cause their own, visiting South Africa several times for the Amy Biehl Foundation, which they set up after her death to train community-service workers and finance education, music and sports programs there. "Amy wanted South Africans to join hands—to sing music never heard before," says Peter, a business consultant. "And she knew this would be a difficult journey."
Not least of all for her parents. Their odyssey began on the afternoon of Aug. 25, 1993, when Manqina and his friends attended a political rally for students at which speakers exhorted them to join the campaign to make South Africa "ungovernable" by its then all-white rulers. Afterward, they took to the streets, chanting political slogans and throwing stones at police, who reportedly fired on the rioters. Later that day, the men spotted Biehl with her friends, who pleaded in vain for her life. "She came to Guguletu at a very wrong moment," Nofemela testified.
Biehl was killed just two days before she planned to leave South Africa to pursue her studies in international affairs at New Jersey's Rutgers University. "We don't consider that Amy was a victim," said Peter Biehl. "She was well aware of the risks and the rewards of [her] kind of life."
When the amnesty hearing began in July, the Biehls, who have three surviving children—Kimberly, 31, Molly, 27, and Zach, 20—listened in silence to the four prisoners' tales. On the second day they had the chance to bring then-daughter's memory to life. As they read from Amy's 1985 high school valedictory address about the importance of people working together to achieve harmony, they held aloft photos of her in Africa and graduating from Stanford in 1989 with the words Free Mandela written on her mortarboard. Toward the end of their 30-minute presentation, Mongezi Manqina cradled his head in his hands and appeared to wipe away tears.
What bearing, if any, the Biehls' emotional testimony will have on the amnesty process remains to be seen. So far, some 8,000 prisoners—black and white—have appealed their apartheid-era convictions, claiming they were motivated by politics; fewer than 100 have received amnesty. What is clear is that the Biehls, who are greeted by well-wishers wherever they go in South Africa (they plan to return again this month), have made a powerful impression on all races with their overtures of aid and forgiveness. "It's just absolutely uplifting to meet people like this," says white journalist Sahm Venter, who has known them since 1993. More important, in the Biehls' view, is that their daughter not be forgotten. "People from the townships came up to us to say, 'Thank you for coming to our country,' " says Linda Biehl. "The people here know why Amy died."
PATRICK ROGERS
KATHY CHENAULT in South Africa, JAMIE RENO in San Diego and NINA A. BIDDLE in London
- Contributors:
- Kathy Chenault,
- Jamie Reno,
- Nina A. Biddle.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
