by Mandy Wiener
The bloodied cricket bat also appeared in this version, but now with claims that Reeva had sustained ‘skull crush injuries’, suggesting that her head was smashed in with the bat.
By this time the rumour had also emerged that Reeva had apparently received a text message from Blue Bulls rugby player Francois Hougaard. The pair had previously dated before she started going out with Oscar. This text message was alleged to have angered Oscar, and was what started the fight that led to the shooting. There was, however, no official comment or evidence to back up this theory and phone records would later dispute it.
While speculation gathered momentum, Oscar was preparing for his bail application in his cell at the Brooklyn police station. As police stations go, Brooklyn is one of the better ones. It serves the affluent community of Waterkloof and the predominantly student-inhabited area of Hatfield. The station commander is the no-nonsense, old-guard Brigadier André Wiese.
Over the weekend a pastor – uninvited – visited the athlete, as did some family members. Oscar’s manager Peet van Zyl also went to see him to offer his support and discuss his immediate racing future. Van Zyl had been Oscar’s manager for seven years and they had a strong bond. The pair took the significant decision to cancel all races Oscar had been booked to compete in, including Brazil, the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia.
Van Zyl told reporters that Oscar’s sponsors at that time supported his client, and that they were happy to let the legal process take its course before taking a decision on whether or not to retain him as a brand ambassador. But despite Van Zyl’s apparent optimism about Oscar’s potential future, it was becoming increasingly obvious that he would never be able to return to his former glory and things would never again be as they once were.
Saying Goodbye to Reeva
The black Mercedes-Benz hearse pulled up outside the white, weather-beaten chapel at the Victoria Park Crematorium in Port Elizabeth. Personnel from Doves Funeral Services took their positions on either side of the coffin holding Reeva Steenkamp’s body and carried it through to a side entrance. It was draped in a cloth and an arrangement of white flowers was perched on top. Slight cloud gathered overhead as the so-called friendly city’s ubiquitous wind whistled through the trees.
By request from family members, journalists retreated beyond a boundary wall, a distance from the tranquil setting of the memorial service. They watched as mourning friends, relatives and the occasional celebrity walked the path to the chapel. Reeva’s parents were embraced as they moved slowly into the building. Not far behind them was Gina Myers, her sister and parents, Reeva’s ‘adopted’ Johannesburg family.
Most notable amongst the celebrities was rugby player Francois Hougaard, in a dark suit and with sunglasses shielding his eyes. Hougaard’s appearance caused a stir amongst media curious about weekend reports around the potential text message that might have ignited a row between Oscar and Reeva. Radio DJ Thato Sikwane, popularly known as DJ Fresh on 5FM, was amongst the mourners. The ANC Women’s League was also present, and Nelson Mandela Bay deputy mayor and Women’s League provincial secretary Nancy Sihlwayi came out to support the victim’s family. ‘The city is in grief, a little angel is no more,’ she told reporters before controversially remarking that Oscar should not receive bail and that he ‘must die in jail’.
Following the event, Reeva’s uncle, Mike, and her half-brother, Adam, addressed reporters, saying that her death had left a void in the family. Her uncle struggled under the weight of the moment, breaking down in tears as he spoke about how his niece would be missed at family gatherings. ‘Like the pastor said, we will keep Reeva in our hearts forever,’ he said. He confirmed that Reeva’s ashes would be scattered by her family at a private ceremony in the future.
Several months later, the Steenkamps gathered at a Port Elizabeth beach to carry out that final task. The moment was captured for posterity by a camera crew filming a documentary for the UK’s Channel 5, entitled Why Did Oscar Pistorius Kill Our Daughter?
A clergyman, his cream cassock flapping in incessant gusts of Port Elizabeth wind, led the family and gathered friends in a brief ceremony. Reeva’s mother June, her face drawn, clutched a bouquet of long-stemmed red, white and dusty pink roses, which were subsequently placed on an artists’ easel below a black-and-white portfolio portrait of her dead daughter before being cast into the crashing waves. Reeva’s father, the burly, bearded Barry, struggled to maintain his composure as he leaned on his son Adam, who had flown in from the UK to attend the ceremony. Reeva’s half-sister Simone Cowburn had also made the trip. Around a dozen people were gathered on the beach, including Reeva’s ex-boyfriend Warren Lahoud, her cousin Kim Martin and her uncle Mike.
The family had chosen to scatter her ashes in the Indian Ocean because they had done the same with her grandfather when he had died. According to her mother, Reeva also loved to swim, loved the beach and loved being with dolphins, as had been so visibly illustrated by footage of her from the Tropika reality show. June was sure that this would be an appropriate resting place for her daughter.
Adam, his pants rolled up to his knees, took several steps into the foaming waves, clutching a plain pine wooden box in one hand and supporting his father with the other. Barry hadn’t bothered with pulling up his jeans, choosing instead to allow them to soak up the salt water. Together they reached into the pine box, drawing out fists full of ash and scattering Reeva’s remains into the wind and the ocean. The pastor, holding his shoes in his hands, watched from the beach as each family member and friend took a moment to remember Reeva, savouring the salt of the sea and their tears.
The Bail Application
A thousand kilometres away from the poignant, moving memorial ceremony in Port Elizabeth, the circus of Oscar Pistorius’s bail application had begun to play out. The date was 19 February, five days after Reeva’s death.
The Department of Justice had warned journalists over the weekend that only 26 reporters would be allowed into the courtroom. The queue to get in started outside the court building as, initially, journalists were not allowed to enter. Only Oscar’s lawyers and family were allowed to filter through and enter the court.
What had started off as a relatively organised affair, with journalists lining up in an orderly queue, quickly degenerated into a mass of shouting, swearing and angry individuals fighting to get into the courtroom. By 9am the majority of reporters had managed to get in, with Oscar’s father, uncle and siblings already seated in the gallery. Around ten black leather office chairs had been positioned in front of the dock facing the magistrate. These were for the camera crews and their reporters. Chairs lined the sides of the courtroom, but reporters were taking up just about every available space, including the floor, and it was treacherous navigating the room.
Camera operators and photographers were taking pictures of the Pistorius family, while the athlete’s legal team stacked up dozens of files on the defence bench, ready to launch the bail application.
Advocate Barry Roux sat directly behind the lectern, from where he would argue his case, while his co-counsel, Advocate Kenny Oldwadge, was to his immediate right. The pair leaned in to each other to overcome the bustle and noise in the courtroom as they paged through documents. Seated further to the right of the defence bench was hired forensic expert Reggie Perumal and ballistics expert Wollie Wolmarans.
At about 9:35am a court orderly asked that everyone quieten down as he placed a bottle of water on the magistrate’s desk. Minutes later the cry of the orderly, ‘Rise in court’, signalled the magistrate’s arrival. Court was in session.
The holding cell doors opened and Oscar walked into the dock. The first order of the day would be to establish whether the bail application would be heard as a Schedule 5 or a Schedule 6 offence.
State prosecutor Gerrie Nel introduced the case and its particulars before informing Nair that the state had drafted its charge sheet.
‘In summary of the allegations and our case is that the applicant
shot and killed an unarmed, innocent woman during the early hours of 14 February 2013. The incident took place in the residence of the applicant and we’re confident that it will not be in dispute that the applicant fired four shots, three of which hit the deceased and caused her death, she was unarmed and inside the toilet with the door closed, the applicant fired shots from outside the closed door of the bathroom. The state argues that the applicant is charged with an offence referred to in Schedule 6 which is murder when it was preplanned or premeditated.’
The courtroom was hushed as Nel revealed a picture of what the state believe played out in Oscar’s home in the early hours of Valentine’s Day: ‘We say there may have been an argument between the applicant and the deceased and the evidence might point in that way, we say the only reasonable inference is that the applicant armed himself, attached his prosthesis, walked … 7 metres to the bathroom and shot the deceased while she was in the toilet, he fired four times and aimed at the basin, that would be our argument.’
Nel insisted that even Oscar’s own version – that he had believed he was shooting at an intruder – amounted to premeditated murder.
Central to Nel’s argument was the contention that preplanning or premeditation did not require months of planning but rather that Oscar could have planned to shoot Reeva ‘moments’ before he did so. ‘If I arm myself, ready myself and walk a distance with the intention to kill somebody, it is premeditated,’ he explained.
Defence Advocate Roux countered, stating that the matter was not even a case of murder, let alone premeditated murder. He said the accused intended to take the court into his confidence and make a full disclosure of what had transpired on the morning in question. The tension and anxiety in the room was palpable.
Roux also challenged Nel to provide evidence that there was a problem in the relationship that could have led to the argument and pointed out that Oscar had offered a ‘spontaneous defence’ in that he thought he was shooting at a burglar.
‘I will at the appropriate time, if necessary, put before you case after case after case reported when husbands by accident shot their wives, or the father the child through doors, believing that’s a burglar, an intruder, that someone is going to harm them.’
He pointed out that Oscar broke down the door after the shooting. ‘If you strip this and you scratch the veneer off, where’s the premeditation? Where’s the plan? Because you shoot through a door because you believe it’s a burglar?
‘What is there in the state’s armoury, in the state’s factual basis to say no, no, that is not so … that is a premeditated or preplanned murder? Nothing. The bag’s empty,’ he insisted.
As Roux concluded, Nel quickly rose to his feet.
‘I must say that I’m now more convinced,’ he exclaimed, arguing why this was indeed a case of premeditated murder. ‘He got up from a bed, put on his prosthesis, armed himself, walked 7 metres. It’s not “I wake up, there’s somebody standing in front of my bed, I think it’s a robber, I shoot.” Of course that’s not preplanned.
‘We have a woman in the early hours of the morning in the house with her boyfriend going to a toilet, locking herself in, locking herself in early morning using the toilet. We say there are other inferences why somebody would do that.
‘This deceased was in a 1.4-metre by 1.14-metre little room, she couldn’t go anywhere, when those shots were fired it must have been horrific. You can go nowhere.
‘There were two people in the house and he should have been worried about his girlfriend first before he took any other steps.’
Nel was becoming increasingly animated with his hands, occasionally glancing back towards the gallery and the accused. Oscar maintained a constant stare, his focus squarely on Nel.
After a few questions to Nel, Nair allowed Oscar to leave the courtroom before he adjourned and left himself. It was just before 11am.
A bustle returned to the courtroom as reporters grabbed the opportunity to compare notes, record stories and make phone calls. The brave – and desperate – left the courtroom to take a toilet break. About an hour after the proceedings adjourned, a court official asked those in the room to quieten down.
The Chief Magistrate began delivering his ruling on what schedule this case would be dealt as. Oscar broke down again, his head slumped forward as his brother Carl leaned forward from the bench behind him and placed his hand on his younger sibling’s back. As he neared the conclusion, Nair made the significant ruling that, based on the evidence presented by the state, ‘I cannot at this point in time completely exclude, if not premeditation, planning.’
Nair concluded that for the purposes of the bail hearing, the matter would be dealt with as a Schedule 6 offence. It was a punch to the gut for Oscar. Court adjourned.
At about 1:30pm proceedings resumed with the real business of the day: the formal bail application. Would Oscar present a version to the court? In his delicate emotional state, would he be able to take the witness stand or would he depose to an affidavit? Each of these options carried immense risk for his legal team.
His advocate stood and announced that his client would address the court by means of a statement. Oscar would present his version of events, his account of what had transpired at his house in the early hours of Valentine’s Day, in a sworn affidavit. Whatever version he presented to this court, he would have to stand by it through any trial that might follow.
Roux began to read:
I have been advised and I understand that I bear the burden to show that the interests of justice permit my release and that I am obliged to initiate this application. I fail to understand how I could be charged with murder, let alone premeditated murder, as I had no intention to kill my girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp (‘Reeva’). However, I will put factors before the Honourable Court to show that it is in the interests of justice to permit my release on bail.
I state that the state will not be able to present any objective facts that I committed a planned or premeditated murder. For this reason I will hereunder deal with the events which occurred that evening. The objective facts will not refute my version as it is the truth.
The statement delved into the athlete’s ‘personal circumstances’ to support why he should be granted bail:
I am a professional athlete and reside at 286 Silverwoods Estate, Silverlakes Drive, Silverlakes, Pretoria …
My professional occupation currently provides me with an income of approximately R5.6 million per annum.
I have cash investments in excess of R1 million at various banks within the RSA.
I have never been convicted of any criminal offences either in the RSA or elsewhere. There are no outstanding cases, other than the present, being investigated against me by the South African Police Services (‘SAPS’).
On the 13th of February 2013 Reeva would have gone out with her friends and I with my friends. Reeva then called me and asked that we rather spend the evening at home. I agreed and we were content to have a quiet dinner together at home. By about 22h00 on 13 February 2013 we were in our bedroom. She was doing her yoga exercises and I was in bed watching television. My prosthetic legs were off. We were deeply in love and I could not be happier. I know she felt the same way. She had given me a present for Valentine’s Day but asked me only to open it the next day.
After Reeva finished her yoga exercises she got into bed and we both …
Nair interrupted Roux as Oscar’s sobbing escalated. ‘Mr Oldwadge, can you check on your client please?’
Oscar was inconsolable. By this point, Carl was standing behind the dock, leaning forward and hugging his brother from behind. The accused was covering his face, but a few glances up showed that it was contorted, red, and tears were streaming down his cheeks.
Roux offered a rather cold response to the magistrate. ‘That is a difficulty that we have to deal with. The fact is that we have a similar situation all the time, and it will be there right through the …’
Nair interrupted; he was having none of it. ‘You
know, my compassion as a human being doesn’t allow me to just sit here, you know?’
‘I was unaware of that because my back was turned to him, but it is a difficulty we have encountered,’ said Roux, now glancing over his shoulder towards his client.
Nair said he would adjourn the proceedings for two minutes to allow Oscar time to speak to his family and regain his composure. ‘Mr Pistorius, you need to concentrate on the proceedings.’
Before adjourning, the magistrate ordered that no photographs be taken, even when he left the courtroom. The Pistorius family huddled around Oscar who remained in the dock. Five minutes later Nair returned and Roux continued reading the statement, delivering his client’s version of the events that led to the shooting. The courtroom was hushed in anticipation:
After Reeva finished her yoga exercises she got into bed and we both fell asleep.
I am acutely aware of violent crime being committed by intruders entering homes with a view to commit crime, including violent crime. I have received death threats before. I have also been a victim of violence and of burglaries before. For that reason I kept my firearm, a 9 mm Parabellum, underneath my bed when I went to bed at night.
During the early morning hours of 14 February 2013, I woke up, went onto the balcony to bring the fan in and closed the sliding doors, the blinds and the curtains. I heard a noise in the bathroom and realised that someone was in the bathroom.
I felt a sense of terror rushing over me. There are no burglar bars across the bathroom window and I knew that contractors who worked at my house had left the ladders outside. Although I did not have my prosthetic legs on I have mobility on my stumps.
I believed that someone had entered my house. I was too scared to switch a light on.