Hosannas for Slain Activist : Memorial: More than 700 people gather to pay tribute to Amy Biehl of Newport Beach, whose violent death ended her selfless crusade for peace.

Scott Meinert had planned to propose to Amy Biehl on Friday, a week after she was supposed to have returned from South Africa. Instead, he gave her eulogy.

“Amy didn’t treat people like they were equal; she treated every single person like they were special,” Meinert said Friday at Biehl’s memorial service at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church. She “made friends like people made mistakes. . . . How could I not fall in love with her?”

More than 700 people attended the service to pay tribute to the 26-year-old scholar from Newport Beach who devoted her life to promoting democracy in South Africa but died violently at the hands of angry black youths.

Biehl, who was white, was “committed to bring justice, to work for peace and . . . with eyes wide open--Amy was not naive--she knew precisely what could have happened to her,” said the Rev. John Huffmen Jr., who told mourners that Biehl would not have harbored any hatred toward her killers.

A Fulbright scholar, Biehl was doing research at the University of the Western Cape on the role of South African women in the country’s transition to democracy.

She was killed on Aug. 25--two days before she was to return home--in the township of Guguletu near Cape Town. She was driving three friends home when a group of black youths threw bricks at her car, dragged her from it and stabbed her to death.

Even in a country where violence is commonplace, Biehl’s tragic death drew national attention to issues of racial polarization in South Africa. Since her death, some groups of black South Africans have cast aside their differences and held marches and memorial services in her memory.

Leaders of the African National Congress have blamed the killing on the black nationalist Pan-Africanist Congress, whose support consists of township youths angry and disillusioned with the snail’s pace their country has taken toward majority rule. Two teen-agers, members of the Pan-Africanist Congress, have been arrested in connection with the killing.

The irony of Biehl’s death did not go unnoticed at the service Friday.

“The mindless brutality of an attack on a young American student working for peace in a country not her own highlights the fact that words can create a reality,” said Matlhogonolo Maboe, 28, a member of the University of the Western Cape Women’s Alliance, in which Biehl was an active member. “It is slogans like ‘One Settler, One Bullet’ and ‘Kill the Settler’ that create a climate in which violent attacks like this can occur,” she said.

For some 20 South Africans in the Southland who attended the service, their feelings for Biehl were intoned in a verse of a song sung a capella by Maboe and three others:

“Oh Amy, rest in peace. You have touched South Africa and you have made a difference. We will remember your work always,” they sang.

While working as a program assistant at the National Democratic Institute in Washington from 1990 to 1992, Biehl set up various programs to educate potential voters in southern African countries that have won independence in recent years.

During her 10-month stint at the University of the Western Cape, she joined several women’s rights groups, helped set up a voters’ education program and developed the country’s first formal directory listing all the South African women’s organizations.

On Friday, her family and former colleagues spoke of carrying on her work.

“Unfortunately, our flag bearer has fallen,” said Biehl’s 16-year-old brother, Zachary. “It is our responsibility to pick up the flag and carry on, and one day we will raise the flag over a new nation.”

Melanie Jacobs, Biehl’s roommate in Cape Town, flew in from South Africa with her ashes and said she now plans to follow her friend’s footsteps in strengthening the country’s voter education program.

“I know her death has made a difference and I know she didn’t die in vain,” said Jacobs, 30. “I can’t possibly hope to fill Amy’s shoes but I will do my best to carry on what she was doing instead of coasting along like I have been doing.”

Meinert, Biehl’s boyfriend, told mourners: “Amy’s hope became my hope; she made me believe in the potential of humanity and to put aside my natural cynicism.

“I will not let this tragedy, the loss of the most special person I have ever met, waiver that faith which Amy has instilled within me. We must not allow tragedies like these to do that. Amy would not approve of that for a moment,” he said.

To commemorate Biehl’s work, her parents, Peter and Linda Biehl, have set up a scholarship fund in her name at Stanford University, where she did her undergraduate work. The Amy Biehl Fund will help pay some Stanford students to study South African issues and work on projects of interest there, and it would also bring a South African student to the university.

“We are so proud of our daughter,” Peter Biehl said. “She has set examples for all of us. We want her work to go on.”

Vusi Shangase, chairman of the ANC’s California chapter, said after the service that the ANC also wants to ensure that Biehl’s work is not left unfinished.

“To us she is a hero,” Shangase said. “Our job is to make sure that her spirit is picked up by some other younger people to help our people in South Africa head toward democracy.”