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

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      That evening, after Amy’s friends had gone home, a contingent of gruff police officers swept into the small station, questioning everyone, the cops even, taking over rooms and telephones. These men, with their jowls and barrel chests and packs of quickly disappearing cigarettes and bottomless cups of black coffee, were the Riot and Violent Crimes Investigation Unit, and they would begin the inquiry into Amy’s murder.

      The big bosses were not thrilled about this particular crime; the entire nation was already experiencing an extended anxiety attack over the threat of mass race-based violence, and now this? The top brass was prepping for a major governmental transition, and everyone was hoping to avoid bloodshed. Nelson Mandela and other political prisoners had been freed in 1990, after twenty-seven years. Soon thereafter, he and his comrades conducted protracted negotiations with the apartheid leadership, with the end goal of free, democratic elections in which people over eighteen of all races could vote. Everyone recognized that in a country with, roughly, a 10 percent white population and a 90 percent nonwhite population, free elections would mean the end of minority rule. The country remained in flux.

      Foreign governments disapproved of apartheid and so South Africa had been subject to trade and arms embargoes. The country’s leadership and its white citizens had become global pariahs. Apartheid had become the cause du jour among American and European pop stars and actors. Mandela was an international hero and, despite laws and legal titles, his influence extended to most black South Africans, as well as a growing number of white, colored, and Indian South Africans. Anti-apartheid political violence was spiraling. Protests, strikes, and rallies were being held almost daily. President F. W. de Klerk of the National Party could see the writing on the wall. The regime, which had recognized that Mandela was their best shot at a bloodless power handover, was negotiating with their former enemies. The ranks of the ANC were growing. In a March 1992 referendum, nearly 70 percent of the all-white electorate had voted “Yes” to allow a process that would ease negotiations toward the dismantling of apartheid.

      The election, which Mandela’s African National Congress would handily win, was to be held in April 1994, in eight months’ time. But in late 1993, that seemed unimaginably far away. The country balanced on a precipice; the smallest tilt and it risked collapsing into all-out civil war. Far-right white-power groups were preparing for Armageddon, and more moderate whites were panicking about how they would survive black leadership; many whites were nervous that payback was coming, and that all semblance of order would break down when that payback arrived. And while it is clear, in hindsight, that democracy was on its way, the black population was deeply distrustful of the status quo power structure and often suspected the media of spreading propaganda, as it had done for decades. They were nervous that they would be hoodwinked and would never truly see freedom, and so they continued mounting protests and rallies. For years, the apartheid government had fomented violence in black areas; the government had surreptitiously provided assistance to certain black political groups and vigilante mobs that warred against each other. Now the government had a situation—in part of their making, if indirectly—that needed to be contained, and quick. A dead white girl was bad. A dead white girl killed by a black mob was very bad. A dead pro-ANC white girl killed by a black mob was very, very bad. The absolute worst, however, was this: a dead white girl with ANC sympathies killed by a black СКАЧАТЬ