One Tragic Night

by Mandy Wiener

  There were other incidents too.

  Oscar’s friend Dexter Azzie told a BBC3 documentary about a separate incident that occurred when he was spending the night at the athlete’s home just before Christmas. ‘It was quite a hot evening so I woke up to put a fan on and after bumping it over … it made quite a loud bang … within a minute, he ran outside. He didn’t have his prosthetic legs on. He was on his stumps. He had his 9 mm in his hands. He asked if everything was alright. I responded “Yes” and then he went back to his room.’

  Another occurred just days before Reeva’s death when the couple was at Justin and Samantha’s Johannesburg house watching a movie. Oscar got a fright and ‘levitated’ off the couch.

  ‘It was the Sunday before Reeva was killed. They had come over to our house and we were watching a movie, Zero Dark Thirty or some or other war movie,’ recalls Greyvenstein. ‘Oz had fallen asleep. There was some shooting scene and it woke him up and he got a fright. He jumped up off the couch and he ran through to the dining room and you could just see he had got a fright. He had to walk around and calm down. He just started pacing to calm down. Justin went up to him and said, “Calm down, it’s just a movie. Chillax.” Reeva just thought it was funny. She laughed and said, “Are you alright?” She was still awake and he had fallen asleep next to her.’

  Roux also sought to dispel the suggestion Nel was making that Oscar’s intention to obtain a collector’s licence and to obtain several and varied kinds of firearms meant that he was irresponsible.

  ‘Then I am not a collector of firearms, so I do not know, but your experience with people collecting firearms, would they be seen as upstanding people, as reckless people?’ asked Roux.

  ‘No, they would be upstanding people, M’Lady.’

  ‘It is just that you have some people that have a love for firearms and collecting them and others not?’

  ‘Correct,’ said Rens, before adding that there is no connection between being reckless and being a firearm collector and that in his experience the contrary is true.

  The gun-dealer’s evidence shed further light on Oscar’s enthusiasm for firearms of all shapes and sizes: he owned a 9 mm pistol, but was in the process of acquiring the most powerful revolver; he was buying two shotguns, including a semi-automatic – as fast as he could pull the trigger it would fire; and he had his sights on a semi-automatic assault rifle, the same as that used by the South African Police Service.

  The evidence also showed that Oscar was familiar with self-defence techniques and appeared to know what techniques to employ when dealing with a threat in the home, and further that he knew the legal obligations placed on a gun-owner related to when exactly deadly force may or may not be used.

  The Imagined Intruder

  For someone to be so fearful of crime and to believe that someone had broken into their home in a secure estate, they must have had a valid reason. The state called Boschkop police station’s Warrant Officer Hendrik Maritz from the Crime Information Office, whose job was to analyse the crime reported in the area and identify trends and hotspots.

  Using Oscar’s identity number, Maritz first established that the accused had never opened a crime-related case at the police station. Oscar said he had never opened cases because in one instance he did not have insurance so thought there was no need. He also said he did not trust the police, believing that they would not give the matters any attention or be able to do anything about the cases.

  Maritz analysed the incidents of crime over a three-year period in the Silver Lakes area and plotted it on a map using red, yellow and blue spots as a record of all crimes committed, specifically house robberies and armed robberies. A single dark-blue dot on the map indicated the Valentine’s Day murder docket currently being tried in court.

  A closer look at the records, and narrowing them down to the Silver Woods estate, showed that besides the shooting at Oscar’s house, the only other reported house robbery or burglary was on 24 October 2011.

  Roux made the point that Maritz could only inform the court of the crimes that were reported to the police – he would obviously have no record of unreported incidents, like those to which his client would claim to have fallen victim. The policeman also confirmed that, in general, living in a secure estate did not mean a person was immune to crime – on the morning of this shooting police were dealing with an armed robbery at an estate elsewhere in the capital.

  On the face of it, the numbers showed that Oscar lived in a secure complex with very few incidents of crime. Even the neighbourhood in which he lived showed very few occasions of violent crime. His terror at believing an intruder had broken into his home seemed at odds with the reality of living where he did.

  So what did Oscar fear so terribly that drove him to react the way he did – going into ‘full recon’ mode and pumping four bullets into a closed door? What did he believe was lurking beyond and what consequences did he fear?

  It has many names. ‘The fear of the other’, ‘the imagined intruder’, ‘the invisible witness’. It is the faceless, nameless criminal without a conscience or a consequence who perpetrates the violent crimes that feature in the country’s media.

  It is what drives many South Africans into high-security enclaves such as Silver Woods, with round-the-clock security, guards who patrol 24 hours a day, alarm systems, laser beams, emergency response cars and guard dogs. In some instances, it is what drives individuals to arm themselves with personal handguns or an arsenal of firearms.

  Generally, though not necessarily in relation to Oscar, this has been referred to by some writers as ‘die swart gevaar’ (‘the black danger/peril’).

  In the run-up to Oscar’s trial, South African crime novelist Margie Orford wrote about this force, in a column for the Sunday Times:

  This imaginary body, of the paranoid imaginings of suburban South Africa, has lurked like a bogeyman at the periphery of this story for the past year. It is the threatening body, nameless and faceless, of an armed and dangerous black intruder.

  The figure of the threatening black stranger has driven many South Africans into fortress-like housing estates, surrounded by electric fences, armed guards and the relentless surveillance of security cameras.

  This figure is the reason almost every middle-class home has a panic button on both sides of the double bed in the master bedroom, a red button that will summons armed guards to the house within minutes. So, the accepted logic goes, of course a man would simply shoot.

  Orford asked the questions: What is this fear? Where does it come from?

  The estate where Pistorius lived and where Steenkamp died is the contemporary version of the laager. Except this one is very expensive; it has state-of-the-art security; it had no history of crime, let alone violent home invasions.

  But for a year this man who was not there, the one who Pistorius did not shoot, has lurked in the shadows of this relentlessly covered story. Is it a kind of possession, this fear of an intruder that compels a man to unthinkingly and without hesitation fire a gun through a locked door? Or is it nothing more than the reclaiming of the old white fear of the swart gevaar (black peril) as Pistorius’ only defence against the charge of the premeditated murder of Steenkamp? What is this irrational fear that has sunk so deep into the psyche?

  It is perhaps the most atavistic of white South African fears. Under Apartheid, the threat of the swart gevaar was used to excuse any and all kinds of violence. In the pernicious narrative of ‘us’ against ‘them’, these dangerous strangers, these ‘intruders’ in the land of their own birth, had to be obliterated. In that unyielding construct of threat and danger, of your death or mine, there is no middle ground, no compromise and no space for thought or language.

  If Pistorius was not shooting to kill the woman with whom he had just been sharing a bed, those four bullets fired indicate that there is still no middle ground. Because whoever Pistorius thought was behind that door, firing at such close range meant that when he finished there would be a body on t
hat bathroom floor.

  What Margie Orford described is what Gareth Newham, head of the Governance, Crime and Justice programme at the Institute for Security Studies, calls the ‘fear of the other’ that is so pervasive in South Africa. This fear is entrenched, despite crime statistics showing a decrease.

  ‘Overall crime has come down, and violent crime has come down by about 25 per cent. Crime in South Africa, as recorded by the South African Police Service (SAPS), peaked in 2002/2003. About 2.1 million crimes were reported to the SAPS – it’s dropped to about 1.6 million in the most recent figures. So we’ve seen quite a big shift.’

  While holistically crime levels have come down, it is the kinds of crime that South Africans fear the most that have increased in frequency. According to the national Victims of Crime Survey 2012, the crime that people in the country fear most is housebreaking or burglary. About six in every ten (59.3 per cent) households perceived housebreaking/burglary to be one of the most common types of crime, followed by home robbery (46.2 per cent). Housebreaking/burglary was the most common crime experienced at least once in 2011 by 5.4 per cent of the households. It was followed by home robbery (1.5 per cent) and theft of livestock (1.3 per cent). Theft of personal property (2.5 per cent) was the most common crime experienced by selected individuals aged 16 years and older, followed by assault (1.3 per cent).

  This explains the high walls, security fences, 24-hour security and private security estates. Newham says there’s a huge gap in the reality of one’s risk and the perception that the wealthier you are, the more risk you face.

  ‘When it comes to home invasions and business robberies and car hijackings, we’ve seen different patterns there. We saw a big increase starting in about 2005 with home invasions, about a 100 per cent increase in house invasions and we’ve seen about 300 per cent increase in business robberies. Now robberies mean violent attacks. Armed gangs of usually two or three or four go into a house, go into a business with the intent of stealing from that place and that property, and so there’s direct contact between the victim and the perpetrators, and the perpetrators are most often armed,’ says Newham.

  According to the 2012/2013 crime statistics released by the South African Police Service, robberies at residential properties were deemed a ‘stubborn’ crime that has increased by 69.8 per cent over the past nine years. The stats show that per 100 000 households in the country, 34.3 fell victim to this type of crime in the year that Oscar shot Reeva.

  These are often very traumatic experiences for the victims and the media will report on the most violent cases in which people are shot, wounded or raped, which perpetuates the fear. ‘That generally tends to build a sense that all house robberies are going to result in some sort of severe injury when, in fact, docket analyses that are taken by the police show that in almost 90 per cent of the time, the victims are physically unharmed. In about 2 per cent of the cases, there is a murder and in about 4 per cent of the cases, there is a rape. So basically it’s a crime of economics,’ says Newham.

  While fear continues to pervade society, crime is not as prevalent as people think. In total there are around 17 000 house robberies a year in South Africa – Newham says that when one considers there are around 8 to 10 million houses, the likelihood of being a target is fairly low, although those in wealthy areas are more likely to be targets. ‘So the chances of being a victim are actually quite small, but the thing is it’s hitting the middle classes, so people who sometimes have quite a high profile in the community – business people, leaders sometimes become victims to these kind of crimes, so it has quite a big impact in driving fear. It is targeting more wealthier houses, so for instance, the number of houses robbed in Sandton is about six times higher than the number of houses that get robbed in [the poorer township of Alexandra] because if you rob a house in Alex, you’re going to get a lot less out of it than you are going to get in Sandton.’

  However, when one looks at South Africa’s murder rate, the majority of those killed are murdered by someone they know and not in anonymous robberies.

  ‘Violent crime affects poorer people in South Africa at a far greater rate than wealthier people. If you look at how murder and assault happen in South Africa, a vast majority of those cases are between people who know each other and live in the same communities. According to the police research and a lot of other research, violent crime is mostly between males while under the influence of alcohol. The argument could be about girlfriends, money, sports teams, it turns very violent very quickly and somebody gets shot, stabbed or beaten to death. That is what drives our murder rate. But what happens is people will get these statistics that come out from the police every year, see “Oh, we have 45 murders a day!” or whatever it is and … read about a murder in a house robbery and make this connection that there’s just this rampant, random murder going on. It’s not like that,’ stresses Newham.

  He also points out that, despite popular belief, the vast majority of South Africans don’t own firearms. ‘If you consider that there are approximately 1.8 million firearm owners and about 36 million people over the age of 18 who could legally own a licensed firearm, you have 5 per cent of the population – adult population – carrying firearms. Ninety-five per cent don’t, so it’s not really correct to think of South Africa as a gun-happy place or that there is generally a culture of using firearms, of carrying firearms; it’s actually quite a small number of people who do use or keep firearms legally. Some of the estimations [are] that there is maybe twice that number, or another 1 million or so that are illegal.’

  In her article ‘The Invisible Witness’ for Yahoo Sports, journalist Nastasya Tay said: ‘As several commentators pointed out, after Pistorius and his friends took a gun into a busy bistro and discharged it by accident they simply apologised to the manager and left. If a group of young black men had done the same, the consequences would have undoubtedly been more severe, with police being called to the scene.’

  Tay added:

  Public fury has been unleashed at the possibility of a man who murdered his lover in cold blood; yet there has been little anger directed toward Pistorius for wanting to maim or kill the imaginary intruder, whom he had yet to even see.

  It is an easy narrative, one with undeniable dramatic panache: the Valentine’s morning killing of a beautiful woman, by her lover, an international sporting icon and double amputee.

  Yet it bypasses what is at the heart of the story: the unsaid assumption by a man whose insistence that if it were an intruder, the shooting – without warning, without identification, and through a closed meranti door – would somehow be more acceptable.

  State of Mind

  It was inevitable that the court would venture into Oscar’s state of mind, and explore his psychology leading up to the shots that killed his girlfriend.

  The Oscar the world knew was a triumphant athlete, arms thrust into the air after running a record-breaking time on a track or confidently posing in an advert for a global brand. But the world had also been exposed to the angry Oscar who felt he’d been cheated during the Paralympics. What had emerged in court was a fearful Oscar, a man who claimed he faced lifelong exposure to crime and felt vulnerable because of his physical condition. While he kept a firearm with him almost every waking moment, he wanted more weapons. This enthusiasm seemingly blurred the lines of vulnerability. Then there was the emotional Oscar, debilitated by violent episodes of heaving and retching.

  It was a complex question of not just who is Oscar, but who was Oscar? The defence team would have to take the court beyond the morning of 14 February and delve into his mind before most would believe his story of an intruder in the house. What made Oscar tick? What ticked Oscar off? What was his mother like? What happened to his father? What effect did being raised without legs have on the growing boy’s sense of security? How well did he adapt to global stardom?

  Once this was established, the court could then explore the question of how this person could reasonably be expected to act whe
n faced with the prospect of a deadly threat in his own home, and whether that response could mitigate his legal responsibility for Reeva’s death.

  Oscar’s mental well-being was a starting point for his evidence-in-chief. After a tearful apology to Reeva’s family, he told the court he had been prescribed a concoction of sedatives, antidepressants, anti-anxiety and mood stabiliser medications since February 2013. His biggest problem was an inability to sleep and being plagued by nightmares, visions of the events as they unfolded that morning. ‘I wake up and I smell … I can smell blood and I wake up to be terrified,’ he said as he grappled to time his sentences between uncontrollable heavings of his chest. ‘If I hear a noise I wake up, just in a … in a complete state of terror, to a point that I would rather not sleep, then I fall asleep and wake up like that.’ His sister Aimee, whose contorted face bore the evidence of anguish she’d witnessed first-hand in her sibling, matched his emotions in the gallery. Oscar stated that for weeks after the shooting he could not sleep at all, which led to a significant amount of weight loss. At that stage he moved in to his uncle Arnold’s house where he was in the care of his family.

  Oscar paused for about 20 seconds when he was asked to describe an episode he’d recently had. ‘I woke up in a panic and I … I am … I am blessed that my sister stays on the same property as I do, so I can phone her in the middle of the night, which I often do to come and sit by me, and on that particular night … I do not obviously ever want to handle a firearm again or be around a firearm, so I have got a security guard that stands outside of my front door at night. But I woke up and I was terrified and I … I for some reason could not calm myself down, so I climbed into the cupboard and I phoned my sister to come and sit by me for a while which she did … My Lady.’