Forgiving Killers
Ginn Fourie’s daughter died when gunmen went on a killing spree inside a popular eating place. Letlapa Mphahlele had ordered the attack. White South African and black South African, they are now friends. Fourie has forgiven him despite his refusal to say sorry.
It became known as the Heidelberg Tavern Massacre. December 30, 1993, an attack by APLA (Anzanian People’s Liberation Army) on the Cape Town tavern, South Africa, left four people dead—among them, 23-year-old Lyndi Fourie. Lyndi had just graduated with an engineering degree.
“She was a humorous, outgoing, friendly person who loved the outdoors,” says her mother. “That’s why she went for civil engineering—so she could be out in the field rather than sitting in an office all day. She was a great horseback rider, loved hiking in the mountains and played a good game of tennis.
“What I really valued about her is that she would spend a holiday, every now and again, hiking with me—just the two of us. You know what’s difficult? Not to ‘saint-ify’ her.”
Fourie and her husband were away when their daughter died. They returned the following afternoon to find friends waiting for them in the driveway with the news that Lyndi may have been killed.
“We had to sit in the morgue for about three hours,” says Fourie. “We sat in total disbelief, waiting.” Then when they could view the body, they discovered they had to view it from behind glass. They were not allowed to touch the body.
She worked on how to handle the situation: forgiveness became a theme.
“I set myself up because in prayer I said, ‘God forgive them.’ We didn’t know who had done it at that point. I discovered later that, at the initial stage, it is better to give it over to God because you don’t know what to do with it, it’s too big.
“Then, as you start to know why it happened and, possibly, the motives, you can start thinking about what to do. I tried to see the perpetrators in prison. But I wasn’t allowed. I suppose I’d decided to forgive them before I saw them at the criminal trial.”
The trial would come later. First they had to handle the funeral. Fourie’s brother, a clergyman, conducted the funeral and counselled the family to participate in the service in any way they felt helpful. Fourie prayed, “May healing come through her death to each person she touched—especially those who murdered her.”
She confessed in her prayer, “My heart is broken; the hole is bottomless; it will not end—but You know all about it.”
At the funeral, her brother recommended as the most appropriate Christian response to violence is to absorb it, as Lyndi’s body had done.
“My admiration of Mahatma Ghandi and Martin Luther King’s stance on firm resistance without violence was well established,” she says. “However, the full impact of ‘absorbing violence’ would only become real to me later, after putting names and faces to the killers.”
In November 1994 she sat in the Supreme Court in Cape Town as three men accused of the killings were tried.
“I was confronted by my own feelings of anger and sadness, and how I could possibly respond appropriately. Somehow I could engender no hate, in spite of the grim reminders presented by video and close-up, coloured photos of Lyndi and three others lying dead in the tavern.”
In fact, she felt “empathy and sadness for them.” She sent a message to them that if they were guilty, she forgave them. During a pause in proceedings before the judge had returned to court, they called her over. Two of the accused shook her hand and thanked her, while claiming not to know why they were standing trial.
They were found guilty and sentenced to 27 years imprisonment.
Fourie was still searching for an appropriate way to respond to the situation, asking, “What do I want to see happen? At the criminal trial, I wanted them to go to jail. I was willing to forgive them as human beings, but for what they had done, they needed to go to jail. I was happy to see them locked away.”
But being locked away didn’t last long. After three years, in 1997, the Heidelberg Three (as they became known) sought amnesty before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. To receive amnesty they had to admit to the crime and give an expression of sorrow.
“I questioned the sincerity of them saying they were sorry,” says Fourie, “but, then, ‘being sorry’ was not part of the amnesty requirement. But they were required to tell the truth. They were required to demonstrate that it was a political act and not a criminal act.”
While they remained serious under cross-questioning, they gave “joyful descriptions” of how they had sung slogans on the way to the tavern. They were treated as heroes by supporters in the audience.
Fourie spoke to the commission of her loss and her hope for the future, and again offered forgiveness. On the closing day, the three asked to speak with her. In a brief meeting the leader of the three said “they wanted to thank me for forgiveness, that they would take that message of peace and hope to their communities and to their graves, whether they got amnesty or not.”
“I was profoundly moved by their acceptance of my gift of forgiveness and, in retrospect, I recognise another step in the healing process.”
Mphahlele refused to go through the amnesty process and had been in hiding until being informed he was no longer being sought for his role in the killings. In October last year, Fourie heard him interviewed on radio about his autobiography, Child of This Soil: My Life as a Freedom Fighter, and he spoke openly about the attacks on the church and tavern.
She decided to meet him.
If she had found a monster with horns and a tail—something to hate—it may have been easier. She found in Mphahlele “an extremely intelligent man with great integrity, very humorous, and a poet. And he seeks amnesty of the spirit, which, for him was much more important than amnesty from a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. By that he means finding forgiveness and reconciliation from people he injured, and he is actively seeking to make restitution.”
A bond was forged, so much so that Fourie was invited to participate in Mphahlele’s homecoming ceremony in December last year—a ceremony where a warrior is welcomed back from battle into his tribe.
Speeches were made. Then Fourie spoke of forgiveness, but she also spoke of the future in a country where the best of both cultures blend. She ended by presenting Mphahlele with a photo collage of Lyndi’s life.
It contains the words: “To Letlapa Mphahlele. It’s a memorable day for the children of this soil. We’ve spilled each other’s blood. Now our sweat and tears will form the daga to build a new country. From Ginn Fourie.”
Mphahlele responded; “In the past, apartheid divided us on the basis of race and ethnicity. Future generations won’t forgive us if we stay apart by choice. Let’s follow the example set by Ginn Fourie, who’s chosen to understand and to forgive.
“Thank you so, so much, Ginn, that you’ve come to show us the war is over.”
Later in the day a tree is planted in memory of Lyndi and others who died in what Mphahlele calls the “war of liberation.”
That a bond has grown between Fourie and Mphahlele is, she says, a miracle. “I have no other explanation. It’s that simple,” she says.
She does not expect Mphahlele to say he is sorry, for him it is not the words that make the difference, it’s what the offender does that heals.
Fourie has forgiven him. She defines forgiveness as “giving up your justified right for revenge.” Her ability to offer that comes from what she calls unlimited grace. “I think it’s grace that interprets what God did on the cross and when I pray to extend His grace, that’s how it happens.”
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