Five years on, New York State police have not found the killer of a South African university student, writes his brother, Phil Molefe
THE world media descended on Cape Town like vultures last week to cover the amnesty hearing of slain American Fulbright scholar Amy Biehl. By contrast, nothing has ever been said in America about South Africa’s own Amy Biehl, Vernon Molefe. Like the American, he died violently, at the hands of an assassin in a country that was not his own. As in the Biehl killing, there were murky political motives involved.
The difference is that his death has been clouded by a deafening silence.
The South African government deserves praise for pursuing the perpetrators of the callous murder of Amy Biehl with vigour. Police investigations led to the arrest and sentencing of the killers. This week, the world got to know the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth behind the murder of Amy Biehl.
Alas, the same cannot be said about the United States of America – the richest country in the world and the one which, arguably, boasts the most sophisticated investigative police network anywhere. The murder of Vernon Molefe was never solved. The case never even got to court.
Vernon left South Africa in the wake of the 1976 student uprisings which, like a tidal wave, swept across the country. He sought refuge in Lesotho before going into full exile in the US.
He was born in 1962 at Sharpeville, two years after that township made world headlines when the apartheid government’s police opened fire on black demonstrators, killing 69 and wounding hundreds.
Vernon went to school in Sharpeville where, like all young blacks, he suffered under the yoke of Bantu Education, an inferior school system specially designed for black South Africans.
Bantu Education was introduced in 1953 by Dr Hendrik Verwoerd, the former prime minister of South Africa and the architect of the apartheid system.
A year before the 1976 uprisings when black students protested against Bantu Education, 13-year-old Vernon went on a solo campaign against the system. He travelled the kilometres to Pretoria where he demanded to see then prime minister John Vorster or the minister of Bantu Education, Michael C Botha. He was driven by the urge to get the system abolished and a better education provided for blacks.
He did not get to speak to them, but he did attract the attention of the state’s agents.
On his return from Pretoria, Vernon was constantly harassed by the security police. He lived the life of a fugitive, forced to flee his home and, eventually, he went to live with relatives in Mamelodi, north of Pretoria.
In 1979, he fled to Lesotho. There he managed to organise a United Nations- sponsored scholarship to pursue his studies in America. He found a new home in the US and studied law at Brockport University in Rochester, New York. While in Rochester, Vernon felt the need to help his fellow black South Africans escape the destructive Bantu Education system. In 1989 he, together with university staff, started a scholarship fund named after Nelson Mandela, then serving time in prison, to assist black South Africans to pursue their studies at American universities.
But the apartheid regime never gave up its pursuit of this young man whom they perceived as a rebel and an enemy to the state. He had some strange visits, phone calls and correspondence from people he believed to be agents of the apartheid regime.
Once again, he was forced to live like a fugitive, changing apartments from time to time, staying one step ahead of his pursuers. He finally ran out of luck when two bullets to the head ended his life on June 22 1992. He was driving alone in his car in the early hours of the morning when the assassin struck.
The Molefe family firmly believe that agents of the apartheid regime were behind this callous deed. Vernon never had enemies in New York. He was loved and much respected by young and old alike. The entire Rochester community was shocked by his death.
But the cops never got their man. They didn’t seem to get beyond first base in their investigations. Many of Vernon’s friends believe the American government of the day collaborated with their South African counterparts. Many believe the New York state police had some reason for not finding out who committed the crime.
The only way the Americans can clear their name is by bringing the suspect to book.
Vernon’s father, the Reverend Phillip Molefe, a 70-year-old moderator of the Christian Centre Church and one of the priests who presided at the 1960 burial of the Sharpeville massacre victims, says: “… it confounds the mind that US police have failed to get the suspect. The Americans have solved far more complicated and mysterious cases.”
In his submission to the truth commission early this year, Reverend Molefe wrote: “Four years have passed and nothing, absolutely nothing, has been done by the American authorities. Our plea is that justice must be done.”
Amy Biehl’s case is equally tragic, but the Biehls can find solace in the fact that the perpetrators were brought to book and justice was done, thanks to the efficiency of the South African authorities.
Will the Molefes ever find that comfort?
Phil Molefe is Vernon’s older brother and political editor of the SABC TV News. He is also a former reporter of The Weekly Mail, the Mail & Guardian’s predecessor