It may sound strange, but I tend to think there’s a little bit of Amy’s spirit in them. We talked about their lives and our lives, but we didn’t ask about the past. Some time later we took them out to dinner. We wanted to know what it would take to make things better. It wasn’t about pity or blame, but about understanding. They were running a youth club in Guguletu Township where Amy had been killed and wanted to show us their work. When we are finished with this process we must move forward with linked arms.”Ī year after Easy and Ntobeko were released from prison, an anthropologist who was interviewing them sent us a message to say they’d like to meet with us. “We are here to reconcile a human life which was taken without an opportunity for dialogue. Peter spoke for both of us when he quoted from an editorial Amy had written for the Cape Times: “the most important vehicle of reconciliation is open and honest dialogue,” he said. At the amnesty hearing we shook hands with the families of the perpetrators. Therefore, in 1998, when the four men convicted of her murder applied for amnesty, we did not oppose it. She was intensely involved in South African politics and even though the violence leading up to free elections had caused her death, we didn’t want to say anything negative about South Africa’s journey to democracy. We took our strength in handling the situation directly from Amy. When we heard the terrible news about Amy the whole family was devastated, but at the same time we wanted to understand the circumstances surrounding her death. In 1998 the four youths convicted of her murder were granted amnesty by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) after serving five years of their sentence – a decision that was supported by Amy’s parents. On 25th August 1993, Amy Biehl, an American Fulbright scholar working in South Africa against apartheid, was beaten and stabbed to death in a black township near Cape Town.
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