Friends Mourn Victim of South African Mob : Slaying: Newport woman’s death rocks university where she studied. Two black youths are arrested.

In an outpouring of grief, friends and students attending a memorial service Thursday for a white Fulbright fellow who was dragged from her car and stabbed to death by a black mob recalled her remarkable compassion and commitment to South Africans.

Hundreds of mourners joined in a rendition of the freedom song “Senzenina?” or “What Have We Done?” during the service for Amy Elizabeth Biehl, a 26-year-old Newport Beach woman who was killed Wednesday in nearby Guguletu township.

The racially motivated slaying rocked the University of the Western Cape, where Biehl had studied for the last 10 months. During that time, she had developed voter education programs for South Africa’s first multiracial election next year and worked on behalf of the African National Congress.

Biehl had been driving three black colleagues back to their township Wednesday when their car was surrounded by dozens of black youths. The mob pelted the car with stones before pulling Biehl from the driver’s seat and hitting her in the face with a brick. She was then stabbed in the head.

Two black youths, ages 17 and 18, were arrested Thursday and were said to be members of the student arm of the militant Pan Africanist Congress. Police said more arrests are expected.

When one of the youths at the mob scene was asked why Biehl had been singled out, he reportedly replied, “Because she is a settler,” meaning she was white. Witnesses said the alleged attackers also shouted the APC slogan, “One Settler, One Bullet.”

During Thursday’s memorial service, Evarson Orange, one of the passengers in the car, recalled that Biehl laid her head in his lap after the attack and eventually collapsed in his arms. The passengers then carried her back to the car and tried to rush her to the police station. She died shortly after arriving at police headquarters.

About 1,000 people, from university officials to members of student organizations and the ANC, attended the one-hour service before boarding buses and cars for a five-mile procession to the location where Biehl was attacked. There, about 300 staged a peaceful protest, some carrying placards reading, “Amy Fought for Women’s Rights” and “Comrades Come in All Colors.”

Rhoda Kadalie, head of the university’s gender program, said Biehl considered herself fortunate that she had not been a victim of violence but confided she feared she might lose her life in South Africa.

“I warned her about going into the townships, and she would dismiss me as a nagging old woman,” Kadalie said. “Amy had a premonition that she would die. . . . She kept on saying how lucky she was that nothing had happened to her all the time she was here but it was all too good to be true. She had a feeling that something would happen before she left.”

Biehl had been scheduled to return to Newport Beach on Saturday before heading to New Jersey to attend Rutgers University.

Speaking with Biehl’s parents by telephone Thursday, Kadalie told them their daughter showed no fear when the stoning began.

“She was always surrounded by loving and committed black people, never thinking for a moment that she could come to symbolize the enemy,” Kadalie said.

Some fear that Biehl’s murder will undermine efforts to end white minority rule and deflect attention from educating voters in next year’s election.

In a statement, the ANC said it was “deeply shocked and angered that such acts should take place at a time when all should be united in their efforts to achieve peace and racial tolerance in our society.”

During the campus memorial service, where mourners gathered around a cross of white roses, Biehl’s black roommate, Melanie Jacobs, spoke to the crowd.

“I want to say to people that you have killed your own sister,” she said. Biehl “was involved in our struggle. She wanted the best for this country.”

The U.S. Embassy in Pretoria called Biehl’s death “senseless . . . another of the brutal and terrible crimes by those who perpetuate violence in South Africa.”

After meeting at the site where Biehl was attacked, hundreds of mourners laid flowers along a picket fence splattered with her blood. Together, they sang “Hamba Kahle (Go Well) Amy.”

Biehl was remembered Thursday in the United States as well.

At Stanford University, a former professor of Biehl and one of her advisers met the press to describe her as a “highly regarded undergraduate scholar” who held much promise.

Her thesis on South African elections, said African history professor Kennell Jackson, was “in the top one-tenth of 1%” of undergraduate honors theses and is still requested by political scientists, government and United Nations officials.

Michael McFaul, a research associate at Stanford who knew Biehl, said she may have mistakenly believed she was safe in Guguletu township because people there were aware of her research.

“People over there were concerned about her safety all the time, but she would tell them: ‘They won’t hurt me. They know my car. They know who I am,’ ” McFaul recalled Biehl telling him recently.

Biehl spent two years at the National Democratic Institute in Washington as a program assistant working on South African and East African political issues. The organization promotes democracy abroad. She was particularly interested in the role women are playing in South Africa’s political transition to majority rule.

“What she used to tell me . . . the women there seem to have a lot of good things to contribute and yet they never got the chance,” said Thoko Banda, a friend she met in Washington. “She would say if there’s anything she could do to help the women to know this, she would. The continent would be a much better place if only the government would realize that women should be allowed to get involved.”

A White House representative called the Biehl family in Newport Beach on Thursday morning expressing the condolences of President Clinton.

The University of West Cape thanked the Biehls in a letter for the “privilege of sharing your dear daughter Amy with us.”

“Amy has filled our lives in very positive and deeply meaningful ways with her spontaneous sunshine personality,” the letter read. “All of us who loved her wish that we could all be at your side at this time and embrace you. For us, too, these acts are beyond our understanding.”

Amy’s father, Peter Biehl, called his daughter’s death “ironic” in that Amy often complained that whites killed in racial violence in South Africa got an inordinate amount of publicity at a time when far more blacks have been killed.

“It’s kind of ironic that she’s getting all this attention now,” he said. “She’d probably be very embarrassed.”