Truth Games: Linda Biehl – understand the context – Mongezi Manqina

Sue Williamson
Truth Games: Linda Biehl – understand the context – Mongezi Manqina, 1998
Laminated colour laser prints, wood, metal, plastic and perspex
Work: 84 x 121 x 6 cm

Amy Biehl was a 26-year-old American Fulbright Scholar working at the University of Western Cape, near Cape Town. Dropping off friends in the black township of Gugulethu during a schools boycott in April 1993, Biehl was stoned and stabbed to death. Four men were found guilty of her murder and sent to jail the following year; in 1997 they applied for amnesty, claiming the murder to be politically motivated. Biehl's parents Linda and Peter, supported amnesty for the killers, saying that they understood the context in which she was killed. The four were granted amnesty and released.