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JUNE 10, 1999
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AFRICA '
REPORT
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Americans help those
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in township where
a
daugher was killed
) SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO, Calif.
(AP) Six years after Amy Biehl was killed in
South Africa while registering voters, her parents
are continuing their daughter’s work to help
improve life in the Guguletu black township out
side Cape Town.
Peter Biehl recently met with two of the four
men convicted of killing his daughter, offering to
help them start a youth group in the township.
“I kept thinking how genuinely proud Amy
would have been of these guys,” he said.
- Biehl agreed to help pay for the youth group’s T
shirts that read “dedicated to youth, awareness
and peace.” »
» The men returned the gesture by inviting Biehl
to be their keynote speaker when the organiza
tion is officially launched later this month.
“These are people Amy believed in, and they
need their chance,” Biehl said. “When they killed
Amy they were quite literally soldiers in the
struggle.”
‘Amy Biehl, 26, was stoned and stabbed to death
after a crowd of blacks attacked her car and
chased her down the street in 1993. A Fulbright
scholar, she was in South Africa to help with voter
registration for the nation’s first all-race election
in 1994 that ended apartheid.
" ‘The four killers were convicted and sentenced
to 18 yearsin prison. They were released last year
after receiving amnesty from the Truth and Rec
onciliation Commission.
~ -At the time of their release, Biehl’s parents
urged South Africans to accept the decisions of the
"amnesty commission and work tostep up the pace
‘of reconciliation.
. The Biehls spend about halfthe year in Orange
:County and the remainder in South Africa, where
‘they have started 15 programs to curb violence in
:Guguletu. In October, they opened a bakery and
‘hope to have seven more operating in about two
‘years.
- Speaking Saturday at a nonviolence workshop,
Peter Biehl urged people to get involved with
programs rathér than rely on the local.govern-.
mient to help at-risk youth. =~ GANAR.
Brown gift
assists in city
gun lock
giveaway
oS AUGUSTA, Ga.
+ {AP)Mayor Bob Youngsaid Mon
day that more than 900 gun locks
were given away to households
with children in the first two days
gs-a program aided by soul singer
ames Brown.
'+ ¥Our original goal was to get
1,000 gun locks distributed by the
neéxt school term. Demand has far
exceeded our expectations,” Young
iid.
?a;Brown, a friend of the mayor
and a resident of nearby Beech
{dand, S.C., donated money to
ay for the first 1,000 gun locks.
s‘ljth a donation from the local
¢hapter of the American Society
for Industrial Security, city offi
dials ordered another 250 locks.
> The locks are available for free
from the Richmond County
Sheriffs Department. Deputies
Instruct recipients in how to use
the locks on different kinds of
weapons.
. City officials launched the lock
iveaway program last week to
E%p adults prevent their children
from having access to functioning
guns.
Augusta Focus
§ is an
§ award
; winning
'fWalker Group
* Publication
AUGUSTA FOCUS
ANG falls short of two-thirds
majority in South Africa
By Pat Reber
ASSOCIATED PRESS Writer
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa
The African National Congress won solid
control of South Africa’s parliament, but final
election results Monday showed it failed to
win the power to change the constitution.
The ANC came up just one vote shy of the
two-thirds margin needed to unilaterally
amend constitution. The ANC had denied
suggestions by opposition parties that it
wanted to do so to amass greater power.
The ANC, which has governed since win
ning the nation’s first all-race election in
1994, took 266 seats in the 400-member
National Assembly — a 14-seat gain.
Brigalia Bam, head of the Independent
Electoral Commission, read the certified re
sults Monday to the heads of political parties
and other officials, including South Africa’s
president-in-waiting, Deputy President Thabo
Referring to lines by the poet W.B. Yeats,
Mbeki said the world feared that the “center
cannot hold” in South Africa.
“But the center has held, the center has
held in favor of democracy. It has held in
favor of the people of South Africa freely
stating what they think,” Mbeki said.
Takingits place as opposition leaderin the
National Assembly, with 38 seats, willbethe
mostly white Democratic Party.
Inkatha Freedom Party, whose leader
Mangosuthu Buthelezi is mentioned as a
possible deputy presidentin Mbeki’s cabinet,
took 34 seats. .
The New National Party —the successor to
the party that ruled during apartheid — lost
its role as second largest party and dropped
to fourth place, with 28 seats.
Bearing out Mbeki’s remarks about a strong
centrist vote, only 20 seats went to special
interest and extreme right or left wing parties.
Seven parties returning to the National
Assembly will be joined by six new ones —
including the Federal Alliance led by the
controversial former rugby head, Louis Luyt;
an Asian interestgroup, Minority Front; and
the left wing Azanian People’s Organization
that boycotted the 1994 vote.
A top ANC official said the party was “very
happy” with the results.
“The two-thirds thing is the white party’s
business,” said Essop Pahad, a close Mbeki
confidante. “The ANC spoke about a deci
§ive, OVErWhelming TAIOTIEY, . kiusesi i
e slight lead 11} theWesterts
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South African Deputy President
Thabo Mbeki stands amid balloons
during festivities after the final
results of the South African elections
were announced at the Independent
Electoral Commission centerin
Pretoria Monday, June 7, 1999.
Mbeki’s African National Congress
fell one seat short of gaining a two
thirds majority in parliament, gain
ing 266 seats, according to final
election results. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong)
Cape over the New National Party, which
won the province in 1994. Whites largely
abandoned the party, which now draws
most of its support from Afrikaans-speak
ing voters of mixed race.
It was uncertain whether the province
would be governed by an ANC- or National
Party-led coalition.
A coalition also was likely in KwaZulu-
Natal, theviolence-plagued province which
was the only place where-the ANt(l.‘;m di{?lr not
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Sharpton joins mourners:
to bury slain motorist
By Amy Westfeld?
ASSOCIATED PRESS Writer
MORRISTOWN, N.J.
The Rev. Al Sharpton led 400
people in mourning Monday for
ablack motorist killed by police,
saying the man who loved “Star
Trek,” computers and his family
didn’t have to die.
“Your son did not disgrace you.
Your son was disgraced,”
Sharpton told Stanton Lamont
Crew’s mother, Lillian, at the
31-year-old Crew’s funeral.
Four police officers fired 27
bullets at Crew after he led offic
ers on a 15-mile chase and
rammed several police cars early
Wednesday on Interstate 80.
Crew, 31, of Morristown was
killed and a woman in his car
was wounded. Prosecutorssaya
grand jury will decide whether
the officers acted improperly.
Sharpton, other civil rights
leaders and some lawmakers
have said the police used exces
sive force, and Sharpton has
suggested Crew was targeted
because he was black. Three of
the four officers who shot at him
are white.
“If it can happen to Brother
Crew, it can happen to any one
of us,” Sharpton told the pre
dominantly black mourners at
the Bethel AME Church. He
urged the congregation to fight
to make police accountable for
the shooting.
“We’ll go to Trenton if neces
sary,” Sharpton said. “We can
make sure that Stanton Crew
stands for something.”
Mourners, clutching a pro
gram bearing a photograph of a
smiling Crew in a security
guard’s uniform, remembered
him as a funny, gentle man who
loved cooking, his friends and
wanted to be a police officer.
They came from his neighbor
hood, his childhood, and his
former jobs as a waiter, security
guard and computer firm em
ployee.
“What’s this jolly boy you’re
bringing in here?” Evelyn
ukf‘eifi‘igé‘dffifiembers‘ aSkifig"l%éf‘;
From page one
ground and blue cross with white
stars, above its Statehouse dome.
The question of taking it down has
been a recurring issue for law
makers in a state where a third of
the population is black.
Former Gov. David Beasley’s
attempt to lower it two years ago
was resoundingly rejected by Re
publican colleagues who still con
trol the House, and it came back
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son when he brought in a new:
childhood playmate at their
former home in Plainfield.
“He would give you the shirt
off his back. He wouldn’t hurt
nobody,” said Dion Jones, who
went to high school with Crew
and operates a shoeshine busi
ness at the same building where
Crew worked as a security guard.
Others didn’t believe he was
capable of fleeing, then endan
gering the lives of police. ‘
“I haven’t come up yet with
one thing that would make him
run from the police,” said Eric
Croker, who worked at a
Morristown restaurant where
Crew waited tables. “He’s the
kind of guy who would get out of
the car and say, ‘l'm sorry.”
And many young black men
said the shooting of Crew made
them feel more vulnerable to
police on the road. Two of the
officers who fired at Crew are
troopers with the New Jersey
State Police, which recently ad
mitted to racial profiling, or stop
ping more minority motorists
than others.
“lam 26 years old,” said Bishop
Joseph Wood, a pastor from Mor
ris Plains. “That could have been
me last week.”
Adrienne Hart, who was in
Crew’s blue Camaro when offic
ers fired on it, also attended the
funeral. Sheis considering a civil
rights lawsuit, her attorney,
Michael Wright, said Monday.
She is not yet ready to speak
publicly, he said.
“She’s been through a near
death experience,” he said.
Crew’s mother, Lillian, sister
Ingrid and brother Timothy
sobbed openly at the funeral and
did not speak, but wrote Crew a
message in the funeral’s pro
gram.
“You filled the home with
laughter and you took care of us.
Now you’re gone and we are
minus one, but you’ll always be
inour hearts,” the family wrote.
And, referring to Crew’s fa
vorite television show, they
wrote, “Scottie, you can beam
“him up now.”
to haunt him in last year’s losing
campaign.
Legislators had avoided it this
year but tangled with whether the
state should recognize the Rev.
Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.
The Senate passed a bill providing
for the holiday, but only after it
also included recognition of Con
federate Memorial Day. The
House Judiciary Committee has
refused to act on the bill.
Given that, “if we send this
(manual) out to our constituents,
I mean they are going to really
think we are crazy, have lost our
minds,” said Sen. Robert Ford, D-
Charleston, who is black.