O.C. Student Killed by Mob in S. Africa : Violence: Fulbright scholar from Newport Beach is pulled from her car, beaten and stabbed just days before her return home. Political racism is seen as the motive.

A Newport Beach woman studying in South Africa on a Fulbright fellowship was dragged from her car and stabbed to death by a mob in a township near Cape Town on Wednesday, only a few days before she was due to return home, authorities said.

Amy Elizabeth Biehl, 26 and white, was driving three black colleagues from the University of the Western Cape to their homes in nearby Guguletu township when her car was stoned by black youths, said Lt. Jonathan Vanderrheede of the Cape Town Police Department.

An official of the African National Congress, Allan Boesak, said passengers in Biehl’s car told him the youths stopped the vehicle, pulled Biehl out and hit her in the face with half a brick.

When she tried to flee, they stabbed her several times in the head. One of her companions, Singiswa Bevu, a black woman, asked the youths why they were attacking her and was told “because she is a settler,” meaning that she is white.

Biehl was among the first foreign victims of South Africa’s political violence, in which about 9,000 people have died in three years.

A native of New Mexico and a graduate of Stanford University, Biehl was a Fulbright exchange scholar at the university’s Community Law Center. She was due to return to Newport Beach on Saturday. Family members said she planned to take a scholarship at Rutgers University in New Jersey next week.

Her mother, Linda Biehl, 50, described her daughter as a caring, studious and “extremely hard-working” athlete and intellectual whose attempt to understand Africa and its peoples had become her life’s goal.

“She was a great gal,” said Biehl, breaking into tears. “She wanted to to give herself to the African people. She was totally interested in (them). . . . She wanted to do whatever she could do to help them.”

South African police told The Times that they had few details about the incident. “It’s very seldom that people come forward to (file a) report when something like this happens” for fear of reprisal, Lt. Vanderrheede said.

But police at Guguletu said they hoped for early arrests.

No fewer than 20 people have died in politically motivated violence in the past two days in South Africa, where the black townships are becoming increasingly ungovernable as country’s first multiracial election approaches.

Those tensions are compounded by a strike by the country’s black teachers, which has left about 2 million black students out of school, idle and increasingly militant. The strike has made virtually every township dangerous for whites or government employees, including Guguletu, where those cars have been stoned by black youths, a sergeant said.

Education officials in Washington and leaders of the African National Congress joined in condemning the killing.

At a news conference, Boesak said the slaying was “racially inspired” and carried out by what he believed were supporters or members of the militant Pan-Africanist Congress, a left-wing black group and rival of the ANC.

Boesak said the ANC would “be using our network in the townships to ferret out and identify these youths and to relay the information to the police.”

“It clearly shows that this is a racially inspired killing which bodes extremely badly for our relations countrywide,” he said, noting that such violence would spawn further racial violence and create problems for talks being held to end white minority rule.

It was the injustice of minority rule and South Africa’s apartheid system that had caused Biehl to devote her life’s work to bring about change, her mother and friends said.

A graduate of Santa Fe High School in New Mexico, Biehl became interested in South Africa after enrolling in the international relations program at Stanford University.

Also at Stanford, Biehl became captain of the women’s diving team, one of the nation’s top-ranked women’s teams.

Rick Schavone, 44, the team’s coach, said Biehl was a good friend and one of the best students he has coached in 18 years at the school.

“She was not a great diver, yet she became captain because of the kind of person she was,” Schavone said. “She came to me an average diver at best and because she loved the sport so much she turned herself into a great one. . . . She set examples for everyone else that she knew.”

Katie Bolich, 25, of San Jose, Biehl’s best friend, said Biehl was “the most down-to-earth person, and yet she was also a friend that we all we looked up to. . . . She was destined for incredible, great things.”

After Biehl graduated with honors from Stanford in 1989, she was intent on pursuing what had become a passion, her mother said.

So after making two trips to Namibia, South Africa’s neighbor to the northwest, Biehl secured a job in 1990 as a program assistant at the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs in Washington. There she helped establish various programs aimed at promoting and strengthening democratic institutions in South Africa, officials said.

In 1992, Biehl received her Fulbright fellowship to conduct research at the University of the Western Cape.

Biehl worked with the ANC Women’s League and the National Assn. of Democratic Lawyers “to advance the cause of the oppressed and particularly of women,” said Dullah Omar, director of the Community Law Center and a member of the ANC’s National Executive Committee.

Omar said Biehl was “absolutely dedicated and committed to the cause of the oppressed and the democratization process in the country.”

Kader Asmal, a law professor at the university, said the young woman had a special interest in children’s and women’s issues.

“She was one of the liveliest, most intelligent and most committed young people I knew. She had this life-enhancing and lovely presence,” Asmal said.

Asmal said Biehl was involved with developing voter education programs in South Africa in preparation for the 1994 election.

Ken Wollack, president of the National Democratic Institute, said: “She was dedicated and talented and had great interest in humanity. She supported all efforts against apartheid.”

And Robert LaGamma, director of African Affairs for the U.S. Information Agency, which coordinates the Fulbright and several international exchange programs, described Biehl’s death as a “terrible, terrible loss.”

“It’s a great tragedy that someone with such promise, as idealistic as she appeared to be, was caught up in what seemed to be an act of spontaneous violence in a country that has been known in recent time for political violence.”

Linda Biehl said she talked to her daughter on the telephone last week and that Amy was anticipating her return to Newport Beach. At Amy’s request, the family had planned a special reunion at her favorite Mexican restaurant in Costa Mesa. She was scheduled to leave for Rutgers on Monday.

Linda Biehl said she often watched television broadcasts about violence in South Africa’s townships and constantly warned her daughter that she needed to be extra careful.

On Wednesday, Biehl’s worst fears were realized when she received a telephone call from Princeton Lyman, the U.S. ambassador to South Africa. He was calling to provide some details about the stabbing and to express his condolences.

“I was very worried about her,” Linda Biehl said, “but she would say, ‘Mom, I’m OK. I’m doing this because I want to do this. You can’t live your life in a shell.’ ”

Times correspondent Anthony Hazlitt Heard in Cape Town and the Associated Press contributed to this story.