Service Held for Slain Student in S. Africa

More than a thousand mostly black South Africans trod the dusty streets of Guguletu township in their best clothes to pack into St. Gabriel’s Roman Catholic Church on Sunday for a memorial service honoring the life and work of a young California woman stabbed to death here because she was mistaken for a white South African.

Amy Elizabeth Biehl, 26, of Newport Beach was killed just a mile from the church on Wednesday, set upon by a group of black youths as she drove three black friends home.

On Sunday, a young woman carried her picture slowly to the altar as the mostly black congregation sang and occasionally sobbed.

“We would like to thank you for sending your daughter to help us,” one woman said, reading aloud her inscription in a book to be sent to Biehl’s parents. “She showed courage in coming to Guguletu and she believed in us and never thought of us as black, but simply as human beings--just as she was.”

“We will try our best to follow in her footsteps to bring about peace in our country,” another woman read.

The crowd at the church was twice the usual size for a Sunday service. About 100 white visitors attended, including a former mayor of Cape Town. But, in a reminder of the potential for violence, white visitors were given careful instructions for finding the church, and were warned about traveling into the neighborhoods.

An elderly woman began the service with a low chant, and then the entire congregation joined in a chorus. Two youngsters thumped the wooden panels of a marimba. Choirboys and choirgirls marched in with lighted candles and burning incense. Behind the woman carrying Biehl’s photograph, a man walked with a Bible held high. Men and women clapped their hands slowly, and thumped against the pews as they sang hymns and the rousing unofficial national anthem-hymn, “God Save Africa.”

The sun shone through pink and gold window glass as Biehl’s picture was set in front of the altar.

Biehl, 26, a Fulbright scholar at the University of the Western Cape, was killed when about 100 black youths ambushed her car as she drove friends home. They struck her with a brick and then stabbed her to death.

Much of her time in South Africa was spent working on human rights. She had also been developing voter education programs for the township. On Sunday, Father Basil van Rensburg urged the congregation to make Biehl’s death a catalyst for the peace she sought.

“Nothing can bring Amy back, nor the many others who have died,” he said. “But their deaths should inspire us and our political leaders to make this country safer for visitors and for its own people.

“Let us put an end to hateful language and anger which thwarts reconciliation,” he said.

Rensburg also praised Biehl’s work and the courage she displayed in coming to Africa.

“Amy came to Africa,” he said. “I am sure many people said to her: ‘Not there.’ I wish they were here today because they would see the love of the community which says: ‘We are upset by this event, we are annoyed and we are tired of these senseless killings.’ ”

Rensburg also offered comfort to her parents. Their daughter “gave her life for us,” he said. “We can tell her parents that we are proud of their daughter. She had a very full life. . . . She had the desire to improve the lives of other people.”

Some churchgoers were visitors from the Church of Lazarus in Washington, D.C., Rensburg said. They were visiting the Soweto townships near Johannesburg when they heard about the memorial service.

Afterward, as tea was being served, churchgoer Johannes Mgudwa said Biehl fell victim to the rampant violence that plagues the townships, and he believes her murder was part politics and part thuggery.

Parishioner Charles Tonga said the service had given people a “new spirituality.”

Two youths, 17 and 18, have been arrested in Biehl’s killing. A South African police official at the Cape Peninsula murder and robbery squad said he expected that the suspects would appear in Wynberg Magistrate’s Court today.