Indeed, Oscar’s image always seemed somehow to be cleaned up. After 14 February 2013, various pictures of Oscar in macho poses with guns or target practising on shooting ranges were removed from his personal website; it appeared to all be part of the massive PR operation to wipe away any evidence of Oscar’s aggression or love for guns.
In an attempt to do damage control after the Valentine’s Day shooting, the website was transformed overnight to show kind and gentle Oscar doing charity work and being photographed with underprivileged children. Letters of support from fans were posted to give the impression that it was poor Oscar who had been wronged.
Surely, instead of just trying to destroy evidence of the “darker”, more disturbed side of Oscar and sweep it all under the carpet, someone close to him should have listened to his cries for help. Couldn’t those in his inner circle rather have acknowledged his problems with anger, his gun and speed obsession, and made efforts to get him counselling and psychological support to help him, instead of just trying to wipe the slate clean?
In some way, we were all at fault for not doing something to avert the tragedy that occurred on Valentine’s Day 2013.
CHAPTER 9
Before the Olympics
Sam and Oscar
* * *
In early January 2012, Sammy got her final-year school marks back – she had graduated with a good matric result. We were so proud of her; she had spent a lot of time at Oscar’s Silver Woods Estate home studying for her final exams, but we never had to worry about her as Sammy has always managed to stay focused and disciplined. I think that’s why she and Oscar got on so well – they could both focus, give each other space, and understood each other instinctively. In that regard, they really were so similar.
Between January and May 2012, before Oscar left for Europe to train for the Olympics, they seemed to live in each other’s pockets. While we had almost totally moved our lives by then to Somerset West, we still kept our place in Johannesburg, so Sam stayed for weeks at a time either at the Johannesburg house or Oscar’s place in Pretoria, and then every few weeks she’d fly down to the Cape. Oscar often joined her at our house, staying for a couple of days at a time.
I think this was the honeymoon time of their relationship, when they spent hours in each other’s company, at peace and in love. Sammy watched Oscar training at the track, recording times, or hung out with him at home, watching movies or cooking together. They loved making healthy salad lunches. He was very creative with his cooking and loved concocting juices and smoothies. Oscar’s speciality, which he loved making for others, was a green drink made from all sorts of fruits and vegetables. Besides its unappealing appearance, it was a very healthy power drink.
His Silver Woods Estate home was a great place to chill: It was lavish, spacious and beautiful. Although I never visited there, Oscar and Sam showed me many photos of the place. Oscar loved design, and sometimes spoke about how he would have been an architect if he hadn’t become an athlete. It was a huge, Mediterranean-style mansion that demonstrated his keen eye for aesthetics. He had all the latest gadgets – televisions, music systems and a bookshelf full of books, ranging from Donald Trump’s business books to a bio on Formula One’s controversial maverick, Bernie Ecclestone. The walls downstairs were covered with signed boxing memorabilia and a painting of one of Oscar’s heroes, the original rebel without a cause, and fellow racing fanatic, James Dean. He loved art and had started his own collection of South African pieces by Pierneef. We often had long discussions about art. Sam, Henry and I were all passionate about it, and had grown up around beautiful works. Oscar was not an art snob, though; his absolute pride and joy, he once told me, was his 16-seater wooden dining-room table that had been made by his woodwork teacher at school, where he would gather friends for dinners.
I was always amazed that a 24-year-old guy could be so organised on the home front, and have such great taste in art and décor. But in some ways, Oscar was extremely mature; he had, after all, been fending for himself since the age of 17, when he moved into his own place. And when it came to budgets, money was no problem.
Oscar was crazy about animals. He told us that he grew up with cats, dogs, goats and guinea fowl. Before he met Sammy he bought two white tiger cubs: Vesta, a female and Vulcan, a male, which he kept at the Farm Inn, the private game reserve close to the estate. When they got too big and his training regime got too intense, he was forced to sell them to a zoo.
But his dogs really were the big loves of his life – Enzo, a black-and-white bull terrier and Silo, a light-brown American pit bull. Silo was a rescue dog, who was locked in a room only two metres by three metres until she was three and a half months old when Oscar adopted her.
Although Sam likes animals, she isn’t really a dog person. So when she and Oscar decided to get a puppy from the SPCA, we were all surprised – even more so when we saw how much Sammy had fallen in love with the little dog. They called her Kola and the two of them were besotted with her; she was like their baby. She became their central focus – she even slept in their bed. I was amazed how attached Sammy got to Kola – she would often speak more about the puppy than about Oscar.
I think that’s why it must have been like a knife in the heart when she came across the profile picture of Oscar’s ex, Jenna Edkins, which featured Jenna on Oscar’s bed with little Kola. Sammy questioned Oscar a number of times about whether he had in fact broken things off with his ex and each time he emphatically denied he was having any contact with her – Jenna’s profile pic on Facebook proved otherwise, of course. (This profile pic remained on her profile until well after the Olympic games.)
Kola was just a couple of months old when Matt, Oscar’s housemate at the time, came home to discover the puppy dead in the garden. One of Oscar’s dogs had killed her. Sammy was devastated. I think that on the inside Oscar was stricken, too, but he never showed any emotion about the tragic event.
Sometime later, Sammy came home and revealed how Kola had died, after swearing us to secrecy.
Apparently, Oscar’s dog had also killed Capone, his mom’s little Jack Russell, the dog he had inherited when his mom had passed away. I am sure he was terrified that his dog would be seen as a killer and would need to be put down. As far as I know both of his dogs are still alive and with him. I always found this quite odd, that two guard dogs did not alert him to a possible intruder on the night that he shot Reeva.
When Oscar and Sammy were with us in Cape Town, we spent mostly happy times hanging out together. In January 2012, we all watched the Australian Open together in our lounge in Somerset West. All of Ty’s mates from university in Stellenbosch were there and we spent a great day together, filled with tennis, lots of food, drink and laughter. Djokovic played brilliantly and won the match against Nadal. A few days later, Oscar flew off to London to attend the Laureus Sports Awards, where he won the highly prestigious Laureus World Sportsperson with a Disability Award. By now he really was part of the family; we were all overjoyed that he’d won and messages of congratulations from friends and family came pouring in, to pass on to Oscar. We were totally in awe when he told us later that he had met Djokovic, who had won the award for Laureus Sportsman of the Year.
But all was not well between Oscar and Sam. During what seemed on the surface to be a happy time in their relationship, Sammy’s trust in Oscar was beginning to fray. She discovered that Oscar was messaging and flirting with other women, even asking them out for lunches or dinners. Of course, when Sammy took him to task over his behaviour, he would deny everything.
He was highly possessive of his phones, never letting them out of his sight, and they were all password protected. One day before he left for the Olympics they were at Sandton City, a huge high-end mall, and Oscar kept trying to rush Sam to get our driver to collect her. She later found out by default that he was trying to hurry her up to leave and get her out of the way as he had invited another girl out on a lunch date. On all these occasions she either forgave him or turn
ed a blind eye. Because he was so good at acting innocent and denying everything, she often doubted her own instincts and suspicions.
One thing that did bother her was the fact that although she had met most of the people in his life, such as his brother Carl and sister Aimee, his manager Peet and trainer Ampie Louw, he made very little effort to get to know her friends. It was as though by avoiding contact with her friends he would have more control over her and have her more to himself.
Because Oscar was a world-famous athlete, a household name and celebrity with a hectic schedule, he could get away with literally anything.
There were a number of times that he used the excuse of past hurts and previous failed relationships to explain why he found it hard to commit and trust people, especially women. Sam accepted his excuses and reasoning for a while. There was a time that Sam was loyal to a fault, and in the months before he left she was prepared to do anything for him, putting her needs and dreams on hold to give Oscar the support he needed.
She went with him to training, she went along to interviews. In every way she was the rock of support he needed. I don’t think he ever really fully appreciated this until it was too late.
I remember how hurt she was when he came down to Cape Town in January to attend the J&B Met, a very high-profile horse racing meeting and one of the city’s premier social events. Sammy really wanted to go with Oscar, but inexplicably he didn’t invite her. Although she didn’t say anything, I could see she was very disappointed. He flew down the day before the event, but went straight to the home of a very well-known mining family for dinner, and slept over there.
He came to see Sam early on Saturday morning and told us he had seen them for business as they all owned a racehorse together.
Up until now, he had convinced us that it was better for Sam to keep a low profile, so that the media wouldn’t harass her. He said he preferred avoiding public places, and in fact their only outings were to quiet restaurants. And surely the Met was one of the most high-profile and media-saturated events of the year! But it was very sad for Sam that Oscar chose to keep their relationship hidden, as if he were ashamed of her. And I know they would have had a wonderful day together at the races.
With all of Oscar’s excuses, something wasn’t gelling and it was causing me great anxiety on account of Sam. I suspected that there were other reasons that he wasn’t taking her out. I began to imagine that his low-key attitude had more to do with the fact that having Sammy around would prevent him from meeting new girls or, heaven forbid, maybe he was already seeing other girls on the side. Plus if he was still involved with an ex, as I was beginning to suspect, he couldn’t risk the public or his other girlfriends knowing he had a new girlfriend. He often went out “on his own”, and when we saw him afterward, he was usually very hungover.
Finally, in February, Oscar took Sammy out to a public function on the eve of Valentine’s Day to Hyde Park shopping centre on 13 February and then on the 14th he took her to a Valentine’s Day event hosted by one of the big mining families. He gave her a beautiful card and a bunch of flowers. Before she went out for the evening, she was so excited, but afterwards she seemed so sad. Her mood went on like that for days. I finally managed to understand that at the function he had acted as if they weren’t together, and she had spent most of the evening chatting to his friend.
Strange how there was something about Valentine’s night with Oscar! He later told Sam that he hated that night because he and his exes had always fought on Valentine’s.
Over the duration of their relationship his inability to publicly acknowledge her became a pattern; there were often events where Oscar did his own thing, disregarding Sammy and excluding her from his plans. He even went to the launch of one of our very good friends’ radio station without Sam. This infuriated me. What right had he to treat my daughter like this? But just when I was ready to write him off, there were other times when he was extraordinarily loving and attentive. It was as if he alternated between two totally opposite personalities.
I think we all made excuses for him and put it down to his celebrity and the pressures of the Olympics that were looming. Now, when we look back, of course, it is obvious that he was living a double life.
There were so many times when they had made plans and he would never appear. That’s one of the most disrespectful things you can do to a woman. It broke my heart to see Sam going through that. She was beautiful, young, bright and intelligent and after all the love and support she gave him, she definitely deserved far better treatment.
About a week before Kerri-Lee’s birthday in April 2012, Oscar and Sam had an argument. Once again it had something to do with Sammy suspecting he was seeing other girls. When they fought they were both very stubborn – so neither of them phoned each other for a week. Sam was always very quiet and withdrawn when she was upset, but we could see that this was tearing her apart. Eventually, a couple of days before her birthday, Kerri phoned Oscar, who was also distraught that they had not spoken and she asked him to please come to her birthday lunch at our house in Joburg. He was delighted to have heard from Ke and told her how heartbroken he had been.
The night before the birthday lunch Oscar invited Sammy out to dinner but only pitched up at 11pm very drunk, along with his two new “best” friends. They took Sammy to a club and apparently had a great time and came home really late. Everyone was asleep when I left on Sunday morning to get a few last-minute things for lunch. Oscar left while I was out and came back a few hours later, with a friend in tow, to the lunch, looking really gangsta, wearing mirror glasses and his cap back to front. He was really hungover and made absolutely no effort to speak to anyone. There were about 30 people there, and I saw how uncomfortable Sammy was with his behaviour. I began to be sorry that they had sorted things out as I could see how compromised she felt.
Eventually, after about an hour, he said he had left his wallet at the house where he had dinner the night before – so much for having invited Sammy to dinner – and he was going to collect it quickly. They were gone for hours and when they came back, he looked as guilty as sin. I thought, “You bugger.” I had the impression that he had gone off to a lunch somewhere else. And of course he was full of stories – he had broken down on a bridge over a river, and so on and so on. We didn’t listen. Sammy kicked him out of the house very quickly and told him never to come back.
He looked very unhappy and embarrassed when he left; I don’t think Oscar Pistorius was used to being treated like that. I couldn’t even look at him, I was so angry. Later on he would bring this up – how hurt he was when Sammy kicked him out, playing the victim, not seeing how he had created the entire scenario through his actions. We were all so proud of Sam for standing up for herself.
But, of course, Oscar managed to wheedle himself back into Sam’s good graces, and somehow Sam found it in herself to forgive him. In May, she went to Pretoria for the two weeks before Oscar left for Italy. Everyone was beginning to ask whether she was going to the Olympics to watch him. I know initially she really wanted to go and worked really hard for me in the business, saving to pay her own way to the Games. But Oscar at this stage decided it would be a bad idea as he said she would distract him from training. So Sam, not wanting to pressure or push him, simply left it alone.
They had a really great two weeks together. On 6 May, a week before he left, they had the dinner with Oscar’s siblings in commemoration of their mother at Oscar’s home. It was an emotional time, but Oscar and Sam were in love, and very happy together. He was supposed to leave on Monday, 12 May, for about six weeks of training in the Italian village of Gemona, before going to London for the last part of his Olympic preparations. The Italians loved Oscar – perhaps it had something to do with the fact that he had some Italian blood a few generations back in his family, or more likely it had something to do with his achievements in the face of adversity.
In 2011 he was appointed by the town as its ambassador for sport. Gemona was his training base for
the European summers of 2011 and 2012. In 1976, the town itself had recovered from two devastating earthquakes that had struck twice in the same year. Gemona ultimately recovered and opened its heart to Oscar and adopted him as a true son.
And so after saying tearful goodbyes, Sammy flew back to Cape Town on Sunday morning, the day before he left. Months later, Sammy told me that she had found out that his ex had spent the rest of that Sunday with him. That still really upsets and sickens me.
After arriving in Gemona, between May and June, he and Sam Skyped daily, often up to four times a day while BBMing in between. Though they were physically apart, Sam was with him every step of the way. He made us laugh so hard on Skype one day when he used a funny program that put different masks and hats on him.
He was still very much part of our lives and in our minds while he was away. He was always saying how he was missing “his baby”, and was so envious of all of us, wishing he could be with us for Sunday lunches overlooking the beautiful dam. According to him, all he was doing was training, eating and sleeping. That was soon revealed to be just another one of his “sad” stories.
CHAPTER 10
Betrayal from a Distance
* * *
Around the time that Oscar left for Italy, I went along with Sam to meet with a friend of mine who was doing work for a TV reality show called Clifton Shores, the brainchild of Quintessential, a company owned by South Africa’s youngest billionaire, Quinton van der Burgh, which was airing at the time.
The meeting went brilliantly. She asked us if we were interested in helping the contestants organise some events to promote the show. The company was looking for a few young, intelligent, beautiful and well-bred women to act as hostesses at these events.
Oscar: An Accident Waiting to Happen Page 8