Amnesty Seekers Insist Biehl’s Killing Political

Disclosing in gruesome detail how they murdered Orange County student Amy Biehl, four black men on Tuesday sought amnesty from the government on grounds that they understood they should kill whites to further the anti-apartheid struggle.

In sworn statements and testimony to the amnesty committee of this nation’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the four men acknowledged for the first time that they had carried out the August 1993 slaying. They had denied the charge at their trial but were convicted and sentenced to 18-year prison terms.

“I deeply regret what I did,” said the sworn statement from Mongezi Christopher Manqina, 24. He admitted to stabbing Biehl once in the heart with a knife as she lay wounded and prone against a fence.

“I apologize sincerely to Amy Biehl’s parents, family and friends and I ask their forgiveness.”

As Manqina’s description of the fatal blow was read out by his lawyer in the packed hearing room, Biehl’s father, Peter, wiped tears from his eyes--his only expression of emotion throughout the tense day. His wife, Linda, stared unwaveringly at Manqina, whose own mother staggered from the room as she heard the details of what her son had done.

Two others--Ntobeko Ambrose Peni, 21, and Easy Mzikhona Nofemela, 26--also testified Tuesday. Peni said he stoned Biehl and Nofemela said he stoned and stabbed at her as she ran.

The hearing is to conclude today with testimony from the fourth applicant, Vusumzi Samuel Ntamo, 25, and a statement from the Biehls.

The Biehls, who now live in Palm Springs, declined to speak with reporters after the first day, saying they would comment after the hearing ended. They have said that, while they support the reconciliation process, they will neither support nor oppose the amnesty applications in their daughter’s case.

A ruling on the applications will not come immediately.

The amnesty process was established by the constitution adopted after South Africa’s first all-race democratic elections in 1994. Applicants first must disclose fully the human rights crimes they committed. Their cases then are considered under strict criteria, designed to separate incidents with political motive from other crimes.

About half of the 60 amnesty applications heard so far have succeeded. More than 7,000 applications have been filed.

The mothers of the four convicted men approached the Biehls and shook hands with them before Tuesday’s hearing began.

As the four entered, a few supporters murmured, “Zwelithu!” Xhosa for “Our country,” a chant of the small black-nationalist Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC) party to which the four belong.

Throughout the day, the five-member amnesty committee, led by Supreme Court Judge Hassan Mall, grilled the applicants relentlessly on whether the killing met the conditions in the law.

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Testimony suggested that the four were riled up for action at a rally they attended a few hours before the killing, which was addressed by leaders of the PAC student wing. At the rally, speakers had told the youths to make the townships “ungovernable” and to put into action the slogan, “One settler, one bullet.”

Peni, the first to testify, said, “I understood this slogan to apply to every white person. . . . “

Asked whether he now knew that what he did was wrong, Peni said, “I feel sorry and very downhearted, realizing the contribution Amy Biehl made to our struggle. I took part in killing someone . . . who worked for our people.”

Biehl, a 26-year-old Fulbright scholar and Stanford graduate from Newport Beach, spent 10 months in South Africa until her death on Aug. 25, 1993, in Guguletu township east of Cape Town. She worked on voter education and women’s rights projects and was welcomed by young activists as a “comrade” in the struggle. She was driving black friends home to Guguletu when she encountered the crowd of youths who had gathered after the rally to stone cars and trucks.

She was badly wounded by a rock thrown through the car window, then tried to stumble to safety, only to be stoned and beaten by several youths and fatally stabbed by Manqina. Testimony at the trial was that the friends in the car had shouted in vain that Biehl was a comrade.

Norman Arendse, the men’s lawyer, argued that the killing had to be placed in the context of the period before the election, when many townships were battlegrounds.

In Guguletu and surrounding communities, political parties pursued unrest campaigns to force concessions from the white-led government, Arendse said. He noted that just before the Biehl killing, the crowd had been stoning cars and trucks and was fired on by passing white policemen.

Under fierce questioning from lawyers and committee members, the three applicants offered sometimes contradictory explanations on whether they were directly carrying out orders to kill whites--or whether they were caught up in the frenzy. They repeated the contention that the African people had lost their land and they were fighting to get their land back from the white oppressors.

“Isn’t it true that you were involved in a mindless, savage attack on this white person, and it was not political at all?” Peni was asked by Judge Andrew Wilson.

“It had everything to do with politics,” Peni replied.

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His colleague Nofemela was challenged later: “I put it to you that the murder of Amy Biehl was not a political act. It was wanton brutality, like a pack of sharks smelling blood, isn’t that true?”

“That is not true,” Nofemela answered. “We are not such things.”

“It’s because she came to Guguletu during a very wrong moment,” he said. “It’s because the students really wanted the land to go back to the Africans and we were in very high emotions.”

Manqina said his party believed the killing of a white would make the government react. “According to my view,” he said, “South Africa is free today because of the bloodshed. . . . The land is back in the hands of the Africans.”

Pan-Africanist Congress General Secretary Mike Muendane told reporters after the testimony that some youths had misinterpreted “broad instructions” and generalized about whites. The party wanted to “reach out to the family of Amy,” he said.

“Amy’s parents understand the context of struggle . . . better than most South Africans. . . . Amy’s death was within a context of the struggle, which resulted in a war that was not of our choosing. Amy is one of the many people who have died under the same circumstances.”