Drawing from the murder of Amy Biehl in 1993 in apartheid-era South Africa, From Mother to Mother, a novel by Sindiwe Magona, shares with us a different perspective. The literature on the murder of white people by black people tends to avoid women in the life of the murderer, unless framed in terms of pathology. At Native Sun, for example, the women were silent [as well as the first to be killed]. It is very rare that these women are allowed to narrate their own life stories. With her powerful and silent novel, Magona has changed that dynamic.
From the author’s preface (abbreviated):
Fulbright scholar Amy Elizabeth Biehl was attacked and murdered by a mob of black youth in Guguletu, South Africa, in August 1993. The outpouring of grievances, outrage, and support for the Biehl family was unprecedented in the country’s history.
[—]
In my novel, there is only one murderer. Through his mother’s memories of him, we get a glimpse of the human callousness of the kind that made Amy Biehl’s murder possible. And here I am back in the legacy of apartheid, a repressive and brutal system, which spawned senseless interracial and interracial violence, as well as other dire events; a system that promoted a twisted sense of right and wrong, with everything viewed through the warped prism of globality crimes against humanityas described by the international community.
The mother, Mandisa, had her eldest son, Mxolisi – the one who catapulted her into the narrative with his actions – when she was a 15-year-old schoolgirl. It should be noted that, at the time of her pregnancy, Mandisa was a virgin. The inclusion of an immaculate African conception raises immediate questions about Magona’s intent. Was it by design? The correlation between Maria and Mandisa and Jesus and Mxolisi. Or was it just a fluke, a byproduct of the plot? Considering that Mother to Mother is Magona’s first novel (though not her first book), the latter might be more legit.
The legitimacy of the questions, however. it is overshadowed by the undeniable fact that both Mxolisi and Jesús were instrumental in bringing about changes in their respective status quo. As a result of Jesus’ crucifixion, Christianity became a powerful force in the world. After the murder of Amy Biehl, the apartheid death knell, which had sounded slowly but steadily for decades, increased in volume to the point that it was no longer a “mound” but a toyi toyi, the martial dance that symbolized the determination of the majority of the black population of South Africa never again to live as a disenfranchised minority.
However, following the path of Jesus in explaining the Biehl murder sidesteps the question that Mandisa herself asks, over and over again.
What was he doing, wandering all over Gugulethu, of all places; Taking his foot where he had no business? Where did he think he was going? Was she blind enough not to see that there were no white people in this place?
Or if? Did Amy Biehl display a God complex by stepping where no white person ever went? Did she think that her presence in South Africa as a well-intentioned white person helping to transition to a democratically elected government would protect her from the repercussions of apartheid? Was she so far removed from harsh reality that she was churning out slogans like a settler, a bullet that she thought was perfectly logical to take her fellow blacks to Gugulethu?
There will probably never be a definitive answer to such questions. Yet Mandisa herself provides a perspective, one that reinforces the primacy of her life and highlights the consequences of disconnection.
Now, your daughter has paid for the sins of the fathers and mothers who did not do their part to see that my son had a life worth living.
