As the tiny body of Angelina Zwane was buried in this rural town Tuesday, South Africa’s political and religious leaders sought to ensure that hopes for racial harmony were not laid to rest with her.
More than a thousand mourners filled Benoni’s Civic Center to pay respects to Angelina, a black 6-month-old girl who allegedly was slain by a bullet from a white farmer’s handgun. Strapped to her cousin’s back, she was shot in the head as the two crossed the farmer’s land, where their family had worked for years.
The farmer, Nicholas Steyn, was not arrested until police were pressured into detaining him three days after the shooting.
The incident outraged many blacks, who contend that it and similar cases show how little has changed since they ousted the apartheid regime four years ago. Black lives still are not valued by whites, some argue, while a white man still can commit a crime with seeming impunity.
The anger is aimed not only at whites but also at President Nelson Mandela’s government, which is accused of coddling the former ruling minority and being soft on crime.
A crowd of militant youths chanted “Farmer! Farmer! Bullet! Bullet!” outside the funeral services Tuesday.
Inside the hall, a string of ministers called for peace and calm, while African National Congress leaders tried to sympathize with the outrage and discourage vigilante action.
“No one should do anything senseless to the Steyn family. The law will take its course,” Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, the president’s ex-wife, told the assembled mourners.
She added that whites had shown sympathy for the dead infant’s family and should not all be blamed for the shooting.
Steyn, 42, has been charged with murder and attempted murder because the bullet also passed through the chest of Angelina’s cousin, Francina Dlamini, 11.
The farmer is in jail and has retracted a request for bail, saying he feared for his life after a crowd threatened him outside court last week. He has pleaded not guilty.
The Zwane and Steyn families are no strangers to each other. Angelina’s grandmother and aunt worked for Steyn’s family as domestic servants and, as is customary, the black family had lived for years in shacks on the Steyn family plot near Benoni.
Both Angelina and Francina were born on the property and traveled its paths every day. On April 11, the young girl was carrying the baby across the plot to find Angelina’s mother when Steyn is accused of charging out of his house and shooting at them. Some witnesses said he had a bottle of liquor in his hand and yelled a racial epithet for South African blacks.
Steyn’s white neighbors said he often took nightly cruises around the neighborhood and helped protect against intruders. A number of white farmers have been murdered on their homesteads, and some were quoted in the local media as saying they did not blame Steyn for “protecting” his property.
Officials from the South African Agricultural Union, a prominent farmers’ group, condemned the killing of Angelina and said it did not reflect the good relations between most farmers and their laborers. Nor did it lessen the need for farmers to be wary, they argued. “When there is real danger, farmers cannot be discouraged from being prepared, cooperating with security forces and defending themselves,” Union President Chris Du Toit told reporters.
Police officers said they did not arrest Steyn immediately because he cooperated after the shooting and was well known to them. They noted that the investigating officer was black, though the detective had consulted with other officers before making the decision.
It sounded all too familiar to South Africa’s blacks. For years, they could say little as fellow blacks were beaten or killed by white farmers who were never charged with crimes, and some claim that such cases still occur.
One recent case cited by black activists involves a white farmer in the North West Province who ran over a 9-year-old girl in his truck while trying to evict her family from his land. Police have not charged him with a crime.
Soon after Angelina was killed, a clearly irritated President Mandela went to the scene of the shooting and grilled nervous police about their handling of the case. He expressed shock that days after the killing, police still had not searched Steyn’s home for weapons other than the handgun he had turned in to them.
Mandela’s visit was criticized by some whites, who said he had not shown the same concern and sympathy for the families of murdered white farmers. In response, Mandela restated his condemnation of those attacks and contended that the number of those incidents has dropped.
Mandela used the baby’s death to condemn racism in all forms and to call for renewed commitment to reconciliation.
Only a smattering of whites joined the 1,000-plus crowd at the funeral, and most of the two-hour service was filled with speeches by representatives of black-dominated political
parties. Many of them lashed out at whites and the ANC as Angelina’s grieving family sat glumly in front of the stage, where her tiny coffin was placed.
The backdrop for the funeral’s political tone was the pending campaign for South Africa’s second all-race elections a year from now. In coming months, both black and white parties may try to exploit the race issue to draw votes away from Mandela’s party.
“This is a wakeup call for our nation,” said Mike Muendane, secretary general of the Pan-Africanist Congress. “We are bending over backward for these racists.”
