O.C. Woman’s Spirit Inspires S. Africa Change

On the eve of the amnesty hearing for the killers of Amy Biehl, a group of women came to school Monday a mile from where the American student died--and paid her the kind of confident tribute she would have liked.

These 18 adults make their way each day from townships and squatter camps throughout the dusty, wind-swept Cape Flats region east of Cape Town to attend a training course. They are learning to help abused women and children and in the process to assert control over their own lives.

“The blood of Amy Biehl waters the seeds of the black women. The seeds that Amy was planting will germinate and help stop abuse of other black women,” said Nomonde Ngqakayi, 32, during a classroom discussion about the legacy of Biehl, who was white.

Linda and Peter Biehl of Newport Beach set up the foundation after their 26-year-old daughter was slain Aug. 25, 1993, in the frenzied turmoil that preceded South Africa’s first democratic election in April 1994. She was beaten and stabbed to death by a crowd of men returning from a rally for a small black-nationalist party. She had spent 10 months in South Africa as a Fulbright exchange student and was killed two days before she was to leave for home.

It is no coincidence that Biehl’s parents chose to make the Mosaic program the primary beneficiary of the Amy Biehl Foundation.

“The Mosaic program was right at the center of one of Amy’s core issues: empowerment of women,” Peter Biehl said. “These women are so powerful, and they know their communities. When we sat in the first class last year, it just felt like the right thing to support.”

Today the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a body set up under the South African Constitution to investigate human rights violations that occurred between 1960 and 1994, will consider an amnesty application from the four convicted killers of Biehl. Her parents, who came to Cape Town for the hearing, said they will neither support nor oppose the amnesty applications, leaving that to the judges and lawyers on the panel.

Christelle Terreblanche, a commission spokeswoman, noted Monday that amnesty applications are by no means rubber-stamped. Of the more than 60 cases heard since the deadline for applications in May, about half have been rejected. The commission has received more than 7,000 applications for amnesty, the majority of them from whites who served in the security forces of the previous white-minority government.

With democracy relatively firmly in place and political violence now largely a fading memory, South Africans have shifted their attention to the overwhelming social problems that fuel more ordinary forms of domestic and criminal violence. The government has declared combating crimes against women and children a national priority, noting that reported rapes in 1996 numbered 50,481--119.5 cases for every 100,000 South Africans--one of the highest ratios in the world.

Given the scale of the problem, Mosaic is a modest program by any measure. During its first year, 12 students were trained and 10 completed the course. This year’s class was expanded to 18 women, who will finish their course work later this month and do practical training for the rest of the year.

Mosaic’s founder, white Cape Town social worker Rolene Miller, said she set out in 1993 to devise a small-scale, manageable program that could directly reach communities.

Mosaic nearly collapsed early this year before it was rescued by a one-time South African government grant of $31,500. The Biehls’ contribution over the past two years has been nearly $10,000--though Miller says the family has relentlessly lobbied both here and abroad for support. Miller is confident that Mosaic is now firmly on its feet.

“Peter and Linda have dealt with their grief in such a positive and compassionate, productive way,” said Miller, who never knew Amy Biehl and only learned of the foundation in 1995. “They are truly carrying on Amy’s work. When they’re with us, they feel Amy’s spirit very strongly.”

With fewer than 30 fledgling community workers, Miller calculates that the Mosaic women have managed to reach 84,000 men and women in the townships in and around Cape Town through community workshops, church groups, factory visits and individual counseling. These contacts are meticulously recorded in files crammed into shelves in Miller’s small study in her apartment, Mosaic’s only permanent space.

The weekday classes were moved last October to a room in the Uluntu Community Center, a spartan cinder-block barracks in Guguletu, less than a mile from the site where Biehl was killed as she dropped off friends in the township.

Miller is the sole teacher. The students, in their 30s and 40s and many themselves victims of abuse, sit in a circle with her on plastic chairs in the chilly room, role-playing problem situations, learning to facilitate counseling sessions and developing assertiveness skills.

“Change in this country is only going to come about through black women: when they support one another and stand together and say, ‘We’ve had enough,’ ” Miller said. “We believe you cannot have peace in the land until you have peace in your home. When you do, that’s when real change will come about.”

Caroline Tsetsana, a 41-year-old graduate of Mosaic’s first course who is now training to teach the class next year, said the skills she learned had brought peace to her own home. “Before, I thought it was OK for my husband to have affairs and to demand that the children serve him and wash his feet every evening. And I would just shout at the children to take out my anger.

“I am now taking my life back,” she said. “Now I can control it. And if families can change this way, society will also change.”