Free We Are Not Such Things by Justine van der Leun Page A

the last several years—the early 1990s, after Mandela was released from prison and negotiations for the first inclusive democratic elections began, saw the country on the brink of a civil war. Anyway, she didn’t have time to go to the townships. She had been renting a room from a friend and colleague named Melanie Jacobs, and lived with Melanie and Melanie’s teenage daughter in a small flat in the relatively diverse suburb of Mowbray, about eight miles from the townships. Amy needed to go back to Mowbray to see her friends; she had less than forty-eight hours before she hurtled toward California, where she planned to go with her family to consume margaritas at her favorite Mexican restaurant, Mi Casa. You can’t get a proper margarita in South Africa.
    Amy didn’t know that Scott planned to propose to her when she arrived. On the evening of August 25, on the west coast of America, Scott had a dinner date planned with Peter Biehl, to ask for his blessing. Amy was a liberal feminist, but Scott suspected she wanted a traditional engagement: Dad’s permission, one knee, Champagne. If life had taken a different turn, would Amy have said yes?
    “We don’t know that,” Linda told me.
    “Oh yeah,” her college friend Miruni Soosaipillai countered. “I have a memory of her saying that she felt like she was ready. They had been together for something like six or seven years.”
    But no matter what, Amy would only be home for a few days, just enough time to see some friends, her mom and dad and sisters and brother, and pack her bags again. She was heading for Rutgers University in New Jersey. She had recently been awarded a fellowship to pursue a PhD in international women’s studies. After that, she would become an academic—or perhaps a policy adviser in government. In her dreams, she would launch her own NGO, a serious, research-based organization that would help protect the rights of women and children in African countries that were transitioning from colonial oppression to free democracy.

    A half mile from Amy’s office, two UWC students, Sindiswa Bevu and Maletsatsi Maceba, stood on the main road, trying to hitch a ride. A friend had promised to drive them home, but had forgotten about them, and now they were a pair of young black women, arms out, looking to be dropped near an area deemed unsafe by most locals. For the past week, the radio had been reporting that the townships were burning and high school kids were trying to kill cops and overturn government vehicles.
    There was also the quotidian township violence, stoked by the political situation. The day before Amy’s death, somebody was stoned and two people were attacked in Gugulethu. Two hours before Amy entered the township, a homeless man was robbed by an unknown assailant. A half hour before Amy drove in, several more people were stoned. At various points throughout the day, three men were separately attacked. That afternoon, two residents were robbed, two homes were burglarized, and somebody was arrested for “possession of ammunition.” There were two separate reports of “public violence” and one report of “grievous bodily harm.” Of all the other crimes that were committed in Gugulethu on August 25, only one man was arrested: according to police records, a “non-white” squatter camp resident had stabbed another “non-white” squatter camp resident to death, for which he was sentenced to just five years in prison.
    For the most part, the victims and perpetrators were black and colored residents of various townships and their misfortunes warranted minimal attention. One exception to the rule occurred at around eleven that morning, five hours before Amy was attacked. A white man employed by the city had been helping to fix a buzzing light out by Heideveld train station. Heideveld station straddles the colored area of Heideveld and Gugulethu, the tracks connected by an overhead footbridge. The white man, working on the Gugulethu side, was