Drawing from the 1993 killing of Amy Biehl in apartheid-era South Africa, Mother to Mother, a novel by Sindiwe Magona, shares with us a different perspective. Literature about murders of white people by black people tend to avoid the women in the killer’s life – unless it’s framed in terms of pathology. In Native Sun, for instance, the women were silent [as well as the first to be killed]. It is very rare for such women to be allowed to narrate their own life stories. With her quietly powerful novel, Magona has changed that dynamic.
From the author’s preface (abbreviated):
Fulbright scholar Amy Elizabeth Biehl was set upon and killed by a mob of black youth in Guguletu, South Africa in August 1993. The outpouring of grief, outrage and support for the Biehl family was unprecedented in the history of the country.
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In my novel, there is only one killer. Through his mother’s memories, we get a glimpse of human callousness of the kind that made the murder of Amy Biehl possible. And here I am back in the legacy of apartheid – a system repressive and brutal, that bred senseless inter- and intra-racial violence as well as other nefarious happenings; a system that promoted a twisted sense of right and wrong, with everything seen through the warped prism of the overarching crime against humanity, as the international community labelled it.
The mother, Mandisa, had her oldest child, Mxolisi – the one who, through his actions, catapults her into narration – when she was a 15 year old school girl. It has to be noted that, at the time of her pregnancy. Mandisa was a virgin. The inclusion of an African immaculate conception raises immediate questions concerning Magona’s intent. Was it by design – the correlation between Mary and Mandisa and Jesus and Mxolisi. Or was it simply happenstance – a byproduct of the story line? Considering that Mother to Mother is Magona’s first novel (although not her first book), the latter might be more legitimate.
The legitimacy of the questions, however. is overshadowed by the undeniable fact that both Mxolisi and Jesus were instrumental in bringing about changes in their respective status quos. As a result of the crucifixion of Jesus, Christianity became a potent force in the world. Subsequent to the killing of Amy Biehl, the death knoll for apartheid – which had been slowly but steadily ringing for decades – increased in volume to the point that it no longer was a “knoll” but a toyi toyi, the martial dance which symbolized the determination of South Africa’s majority black population to never again live as a disenfranchised minority.
Going the Jesus route, however, in explaining the murder of Biehl sidesteps the question Mandisa herself asks, over and over again.
What was she doing, vagabonding all over Gugulethu, of all places; taking her foot where she had no business? Where did she think she was going? Was she blind not to see there were no white people in this place?
Or does it? Did Amy Biehl demonstrate a god complex by treading where no white person went? Did she think her presence in South Africa as a well meaning white person assisting with the transition to a democratically elected government would protect her from repercussions of apartheid? Was she so divorced from the harsh reality that produced slogans like one settler, one bullet that she thought it perfectly logically to drive her black companions to Gugulethu?
There will probably never be a definitive answer to such questions. However, Mandisa herself provides a perspective – one that both reinforces the primacy of her life as well as highlights of the consequences of disconnectedness.
Now, your daughter has paid for the sins of the fathers and mothers who did not do their share of seeing that my son had a life worth living.
Ladies you will feel this & I hope that my fellas can understand the notion…Here we go
