Amy Biehl Foundation

Let me paint a picture for you. Imagine a very large white Mercedes tour bus barreling through the poverty-stricken "Cape Flats" townships as many white college kid faces peer through the windows looking down at the daily activity in the community. Then, the tour bus gets stuck going around a hairpin turn in the heart of the township. By this time, the kids are running behind the bus and the community is emerging from their tin shack homes to see what is going on. I am absolutely horrified by this whole experience. Through all of my travels, I have become more critical of the power structures of tourism, especially poverty tourism. In this particular situation all I could think about was how the white power structure was overpowering the black community, much like apartheid...as the black community was looked at like animals in a zoo. But, the crazy part of this narrative is that we were the ones in the cage...a big Mercedes cage. I am still grappling with that experience and trying to make sense of it all.

After the disturbing drive through poverty, we stopped at two primary schools where the Amy Biehl Foundation coordinates after-school programs for the children in the township which was definitely the silver lining of the tour. Amy Biehl was an American Fulbright scholar working in the townships in 1992 (during apartheid) and attending the University of Western Cape as she advocated for voter rights and women participation in the process. During her time in Cape Town, she often visited the townships and on August 25, 1993 as she was dropping off a friend in the Guguletu township, an angry political mob pulled her from the car and killed her. The incredible side of this story is how her parents dealt with her death. Instead of being taken away by their anger with the fact that the people Amy was trying to help actually killed her, they found forgiveness as they participated in the truth and reconciliation process with the four murderers who killed their daughter. The four murderers were granted amnesty and released from prison in 1998 and one of Amy's killers is now an employee for the very foundation that Amy's parents founded. The foundation in Amy's name was founded in 1997 and serves many townships with after school programs. We visited two of the programs and were entertained by singing, dancing, and music. The story itself was enough to send shivers down my back.

"The mission of the Amy Biehl Foundation is to develop and empower youth in the impoverished townships in and around Cape Town through educational and cultural activities, whilst at the same time preventing youth violence, crime, drug abuse and HIV/AIDS through a holistic approach to community development in socio-economically disadvantaged communities."