We Are Not Such Things: A Murder in a South African Township and the Search for Truth and Reconciliation

We Are Not Such Things: A Murder in a South African Township and the Search for Truth and Reconciliation
Литагент HarperCollins

A ‘MAKING A MURDERER’ set in South Africa - a gripping true-crime story of murder and the justice system in the shadow of apartheidIn 1993, in the final, fiery days of apartheid, a 26-year-old white American activist called Amy Biehl was murdered by a group of young black men in a township near Cape Town. Four men were tried and convicted of the murder and sentenced to eighteen years in prison. A few years later they had been freed. Two of the men were subsequently employed by Amy’s parents to work at a charity set up in her memory. The men grew close to the Biehls. They called them ‘Grandmother’ and ‘Grandfather’.Justine van der Leun, an American writer living in South Africa, set out to tell this twenty-year story, but as she delved into the case, the prevailing narrative started to unravel. Why didn’t the eyewitness reports agree on who killed Amy Biehl? Were the men convicted of the crime actually responsible? And could it be that another violent crime committed on the same day, in the very same area, was connected to the murder of Amy Biehl?We Are Not Such Things is the result of Justine van der Leun’s four years investigating this strange, knotted tale of injustice, hatred, forgiveness and reconciliation. It is a gripping journey through the bizarre twists and turns of this case and its aftermath – and a lucid, eye-opening account of life today in a society still fractured and haunted by apartheid.

Copyright (#ulink_97be820f-7ca7-500e-aeeb-c69a5b37c9cf)

4th Estate

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.4thEstate.co.uk (http://www.4thEstate.co.uk)

This eBook first published in Great Britain in 2016 by 4th Estate

First published in the United States by Spiegel & Grau, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York in 2016

Copyright © 2016 by Justine van der Leun

Cover photograph courtesy of the Nofemela family

Justine van der Leun asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

Map by Jeffrey L. Ward

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins

Source ISBN: 9780008191092

Ebook Edition © June 2016 ISBN: 9780008191061

Version: 2017-05-26

Praise for We Are Not Such Things: (#ulink_ce2a0dbe-a67c-5487-a793-9a538b78bd2a)

‘A book I kept returning to. It’s not so much the story of the idealistic US activist Amy Biehl’s murder in the South African township of Gugulethu but about what happened next: the lies and self-delusion of both perpetrators and family and the inevitably manipulative ends to which her death was put in a nation still choking on apartheid’s legacy. Van der Leun has a compassionate but admirably clear eye’

MICHELA WRONG, Spectator Books of the Year

‘Unforgettable. A gripping narrative that examines the messiness of truth, the illusory nature of reconciliation, the all too often false promise of justice’

Boston Globe

‘Where the book is gripping, explosive even, is in the kind of obsessive forensic investigation that is the legacy of highbrow sleuths from Truman Capote to Janet Malcolm … Van der Leun can write superbly, and among Easy’s people in Gugulethu, she crafts a close sense of place that rivals the work of Katherine Boo’

New York Times

‘Extraordinary. A dense and nuanced portrait of a country whose confounding, convoluted past is never quite history’

Entertainment Weekly

‘Moving … necessary … A story of frustrated expectations, broken dreams, endemic greed and corruption, but also indomitable human spirit’

Minneapolis Star Tribune

‘Displays exquisite insights into the inner lives of those involved, the erasure of shameful histories, and the stresses of absolution without accountability’

New Yorker

‘A murder story told with the dramatic tension of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood and the precision of the very best nonfiction reporting. Van der Leun takes her readers on hair-raising excursions into the mazes of backyard shacks where Biehl’s killers were raised and into the often-absurd world of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Each page bursts with fresh insights into the contradictions of modern-day South Africa as well as the elusiveness of finding the absolute truth’

BARBARA DEMICK, author of Nothing to Envy

‘Suspenseful and engrossing. Van der Leun shows how a powerful desire for reconciliation can in fact obscure the truth, a truth we need in order to establish real equity and the justice that all people deserve’

PIPER KERMAN, author of Orange is the New Black

‘A fascinating, clear-eyed journey into the disheartening political reality of contemporary South Africa. In her pursuit of the facts behind a decades-old murder, she shatters convenient narratives about the end of apartheid and the nature of justice, and proceeds on a headlong chase for deeper truths, even those that recede the closer she gets to them’

JILL LEOVY, author of Ghettoside

‘A troubling, deeply felt piece of work. Van der Leun’s excellent reportage reveals that things are not what they seem in South Africa. The book is proof that apartheid has left behind a league of ghosts, Amy Biehl among them, and that the South Africa that Nelson Mandela envisioned remains a distant dream’

JAMES MCBRIDE, author of Kill ’Em and Leave

‘What an achievement! This unsparing but compassionate work will enlighten and shake its readers’

NORMAN RUSH, author of Mating

‘This is not just fine journalism but astonishing storytelling. Justine van der Leun brings to the page a rare combination of muscular reporting, limitless curiosity, soulful vision, courage and tenderness. Through her gifts, you will feel as if you have travelled deep into a country you only thought you knew’

JEFF HOBBS, author of The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace

Dedication (#ulink_db087f79-9804-5734-bd31-69fffa5150cd)

For Samuel David Choritz

STATE LAWYER: You see what I am going to suggest to you, Mr. Nofemela, is that the attack and brutal murder of Amy Biehl could not have been done with a political objective. It was wanton brutality, like a pack of sharks smelling blood. Isn’t that the truth?

EASY NOFEMELA: No, that’s not true, that’s not true. We are not such things.

Contents

Cover (#u6d6d6ede-441c-5b39-983f-7a9b7031a0f7)