Johannesburg | Monday
TWO icons of South Africa’s post-apartheid struggle, both intimately linked to the violent death of American student Amy Biehl, have died.
Peter Biehl, the father of Amy, the American Fulbright Scholar who was murdered in a racist attack in Guguletu, Cape Town, in 1993, died on Sunday. He was 59.
Father Basil van Rensburg of St Gabriel’s Catholic Church in Guguletu, who had close ties with the Biehl family, ironically also passed away on Sunday.
The Biehls attended St Gabriel’s when they were in South Africa. Shortly before his death, Van Rensburg had said his whole congregation was saddened by Peter Biehl’s illness.
Biehl died in California from complications caused by colon cancer. He had been in hospital for a month after falling ill during his most recent visit to South Africa with his wife, Linda Biehl.
When Amy was killed, Biehl gave up a career in marketing in the US to help empower disadvantaged South Africans.
Inspired their daughter’s dedication in helping poor South Africans, Peter and Linda Biehl supported amnesty for Amy’s killers at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
They drew praise both in South Africa and internationally for their stance, which saw four young men released from jail where they had been serving 18 years for Amy’s murder.
A year after Amy’s death her parents established the Amy Biehl Foundation in the United States to raise money to channel to communities in Guguletu. In September 1997 the Amy Biehl Foundation Trust was launched in South Africa.
”Peter saw great hope in South Africa and also acquired strength from the South African people. He truly believed that it was a miraculous country,” said Linda Biehl.
The Trust today employs 87 South Africans, both male and female and of all races and ages, running various projects to benefit thousands of children.
The Amy Biehl Foundation Trust employs two of the men convicted for Amy’s murder, Mzikhona ”Easy” Nofemela and Ntobeko Peni.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who chaired the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, had been in close contact with Linda Biehl throughout her husband’s illness.
He said Peter Biehl had set standards of restorative justice that were admired throughout the world.
”What was so remarkable was not only that they forgave the killers of their daughter, but that they went so far as to rehabilitate them,” he said.
Father Basil van Rensburg, a Catholic priest, who had close ties with the Biehls and gained international recognition for his fight against forced removals from Cape Town’s District Six, died at the age of 71 from diabetes-related complications.
Van Rensburg, born in Cape Town, entered the priesthood in his mid-40s after giving up a job in the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC).
As parish priest in District Six, where the coloured community was being torn apart by Group Areas Act removals, he made a name for himself for his outspoken criticism of the forced removals.
In a tribute released on Monday, Cape Town city mayor Gerald Morkel said Van Rensburg did more than virtually anybody else to alert the world to the ”wanton destruction of a settled community in the very heart of the Mother City”.
”His courage in the face of incessant intimidation and his determination to expose the cruelties of forced removals, at a time when such conviction was often the target of security police harassment, set an example to many white South Africans who were becoming increasingly horrified at what was being done in their name,” Morkel said.
In the mid 1980s he became parish priest at St Gabriel’s in Guguletu, an impoverished black township on the Cape Flats. He worked tirelessly on a range of social programmes, including Aids education, to better the life of the community.
He encouraged the development of a full Xhosa liturgy or service, at St Gabriel’s, with music from indigenous African instruments.
A friend, Father Stuart McGregor, said Van Rensburg kept his parish running with very little financial help from formal church structures.
”I always felt he was able to speak the truth, no matter how uncomfortable it was to either the ecclesiastical hierarchy or the civil hierarchy, and no matter at what cost to his personal comfort. He was a social and a religious prophet,” said McGregor. – Sapa