Reeva: A Mother's Story (14 page)

It may sound strange, when he was hailed by the world as the Blade Runner, but I don’t follow sport, I’m not a great reader of newspapers, and I’d never heard of Oscar Pistorius. Reeva had never mentioned him before. I honestly didn’t know who Oscar Pistorius was. I’ve always liked the name Oscar. It’s a beautiful name; it has presence. I’ve since learnt that most people knew and admired him because, as South Africans, they were so proud of him for his charitable achievements in helping victims of landmines and other children who had lost their legs, and for all the wonderful barriers he had broken through as a Paralympian sprinter. But I wasn’t aware of him as a personality, a role model and athletic superstar, none of that – and I wasn’t used to seeing my daughter on the arm of a man other than Warren Lahoud.

To our mind, Warren was the perfect gentleman for our daughter. When she brought him home to meet us, we all clicked. Barry and I could see he treated her with tremendous love and respect, but by the early autumn of 2012 she had broken up with him. I don’t really know why. They seemed so happy and well suited for so long. As the years went by, though, Warren never asked
that
question. Reeva didn’t say anything to me on the subject of a proposal because she loved him and she wouldn’t want me to feel ill of him, but I imagine she thought if he hadn’t asked her to marry him after five or six years, when she was approaching thirty, then maybe he never would. There comes a time when you think, is it ever going to happen? I think she was secretly hoping for a surprise engagement. Maybe she decided she couldn’t continue with him for another five years in case he never intended to marry her. Maybe she wanted children and he wasn’t ready. I do know that she adored Warren, but she’d started to ask herself serious questions – you know, I’m nearly thirty, can we move forward with this? Can we have kids? She thought about the future very carefully. She was evolving as a woman and starting to ask herself different questions about what she wanted from life.

Friends like Kristin could not understand why she wanted to split up with him either. She said she still found him attractive. She could see he was a provider. She insisted whoever he married would be a very lucky woman. They remained on friendly terms but initially she was in two minds about that; she wanted Warren to move on with his life. ‘As a friend who was always single, who knew how terrible it is on the dating scene, I couldn’t understand it,’ Kristin says. ‘I thought she’d get her fingers burnt – not in the way she did, obviously – but she’d see what it was like out there and come back to Warren. They were so good together.’

The truth is her career was taking off. After all her hard work, her extremely professional approach to looking after herself and to interpreting briefs for casting sessions, she was becoming truly high profile. Always modest, she did privately acknowledge that she was in a position now when people recognised her in public places whereas, before, she could walk around totally unnoticed. She was conscious of being on the radar and that was fulfilling in that it was a sign she had become successful. Having been a late starter, she had grafted away and evolved into the calibre of model who could feature in the
FHM
Calendar 2011 (as the October girl) and a sexy shoot for
FHM
Collections. The
FHM
association was solid. She was voted #40 out of their list of the hundred most beautiful women in the world in 2011 and #45 in 2012; and the prized feature of her portfolio was the cover-girl shoot for the prized December issue in 2011. Oh my word, she worked hard for it. She went back to be seen by editor Hagen Engler three times. Twice he said, no, you’re still a bit overweight, and she’d go away, consult a nutritionist, hit the gym, do her routine of skipping, lunges, a hundred press-ups and a hundred sit-ups a day. The third time she went back he said he nearly fell off the chair and he gave her the December cover.

So, what with all the buzz leading up to filming
Tropika
as well, she was out on the radar of the glamorous Johannesburg scene, invited as a fixture to all sorts of events, posing for photographers for the social columns. Maintaining a glamorous profile is a vital part of being a sought-after model – and Warren wasn’t part of that world. He was a workaholic in his own sphere. To run their fruit and vegetable export business, he was often up in the small hours to go to the wholesalers market and often out of the country. He wasn’t part of Reeva’s modelling world with its increasing late-night, bright-light demands. When they were together in Johannesburg they shared the same work ethic: both very disciplined about going to the gym before heading off to work. But socially they were moving in opposite directions, operating in different time zones.

When she told us she was going to break up with Warren, we couldn’t understand it. And then she ends up with this gun-toting guy. Barry was particularly upset because he loved Warren. Although he thought Johannesburg was a more dangerous place for Reeva than Port Elizabeth, he felt she was safe with Warren because he absolutely worshipped her. It was hard for her, moving to a competitive, brittle city like Johannesburg, and she was lucky to find stability and security early on in her domestic life with Warren. She used to buy me a plane ticket and I’d go to stay with her for a week. We did that often. It was great fun, catching up, chatting. I loved going to stay there. She had decorated their flat in a lovely, modern way with a huge outsize clock on the wall and a brown leather lounge suite. The cats’ sleeping box took pride of place and their toys were neatly stored around the room. She had everything ordered just so. Kim remembers once when Reeva was staying with her in Cape Town, Warren called asking where something might be, and Reeva replied, telling him precisely that it was five centimetres from something on the second shelf of a particular cupboard. She had everyone organised. Her Johannesburg friends were different, hi-faluting people, but she included me in everything she did. We’d go out with a group to a restaurant or whatever and she’d tell her friends they’d have to put up with me as well! I’ve still got one of those letters she sent inviting me for a visit. ‘
I really don’t want to enclose too much info now cos I want to save everything for when I see you. YAY. We’re going to drink wine, drink coffee, watch movies and chat, chat, chat!!!
’ She was so generous in sharing her life.

After the split, she moved out of the house she shared with Warren and rented a room in a friend’s house as a short-term measure. She stayed there for seven months but she’d phoned her father to say she wanted to move on and get her own place, it wasn’t working out. Barry became very worked up and fretful about Reeva’s safety now she was lodging; he kept begging her to come home. By Christmas he had an overwhelming need to have her back with us in Port Elizabeth. He’d imagine her being tailed home after one of these red-carpet events full of gorgeous people wearing expensive watches and jewellery. It could be that a lot of it is urban myth, but you always hear stories of how dangerous Johannesburg can be, especially for a young woman. We’d hear of muggings and car-jackings and horrible incidents occurring at knife or gunpoint. Barry would ring and plead with her to move back. It was like he had a sixth sense that something bad was going to happen to her.

In the autumn of 2012, Reeva was going through a lot emotionally because she wasn’t a person who could be unkind. When she suggested they go their separate ways, Warren was devastated and she couldn’t stand that she was causing him pain. She carried a lot of guilt because she didn’t want to break his heart. It’s like a divorce, she said to Kim. I do feel sympathy for Warren because he said that in his head he just assumed they were going to be together for the rest of their lives. He wanted to buy a house for her and give her all sorts of things. Maybe if he had communicated that to her, things would have turned out differently. But life was taking them in opposing directions. They hardly saw each other. So they split in late August. She met and became close to Francois Hougaard in September/October before they decided to keep things platonic, and then on 4 November she met Oscar through this Justin Divaris guy, who was also a friend of Francois’s.

By his own account, Oscar was persistent in his pursuit of her. In court he described himself as ‘besotted’ and told his lawyer Barry Roux, ‘I was very keen on Reeva. If anything, I was more keen than she was.’ He insisted on seeing her every day for the first seven days after their initial date at the Sports Awards. Those close to her suggested she felt ‘caged in’ and ‘stalked’. Her landlord in Johannesburg, Cecil Myers, Gina’s father, felt obliged to warn him to ‘back off’ as Oscar forced himself on her emotionally. He said he found him superficially polite, but very moody, hasty and impatient. Other friends said she found him overwhelming. On 30 November, at the British Olympic Ball in the Grosvenor House Hotel in London, a glowing Oscar showed people on his table at dinner a picture stored on his phone of ‘this amazing girl’ – Reeva – saying she was going to be the perfect girlfriend for him. Beyond her vivaciousness and her beauty, he said he liked the fact that she was a bit older than him, mature and dedicated to her career.

Oscar’s persistence paid off. How, or why, she decided to be with him is something I keep trying to work out. I once met a man who said he had special powers and he informed me one of my daughters was a powerful personality with a strong will – and that would be Reeva, I thought – and my other daughter would always be in trouble because she believes everything people say to her, especially men. Well, Simone has a lovely, wonderful heart and she can’t say ‘no’; in fact, she can’t spell ‘no’. This man hadn’t met either of them, but that was how I thought of them in my mind. Simone has been married three times, and though I did fear that Reeva also wore her heart on her sleeve I thought she was so
aware
. And look at what happened to her. I think ultimately she felt sorry for Oscar. She would have seen him as vulnerable and she probably thought she could make things better for him. She was a nurturer, a carer, she wanted to look after him. And as Abigail says, Reeva was a rainbow and fairies kind of person, always seeing the pretty side of things and thinking the best of people. She admired his achievements as a double amputee. She found his intensity attractive. They kept whatever was going on between them, or not going on yet, quiet and private. In the middle of November her Twitter feed – a very public forum – suggests underlying turmoil among all her happy posts highlighting industry events, launches and product recommendations:

They said Reeva baby use your head. But I chose to use my heart instead.
 

By the end of November she had started acknowledging a friendship with Oscar, retweeting his philosophical nuggets:

‘The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.’ Wise words for an amazing person @OscarPistorius.
 

A post on 3 December read –

I’m so disappointed in myself today, more than anyone else. I never learn from the past. How do you grow if you never learn? #sadheart.
 

On
6 December she is playful again:

Wondering what my stalker is up to? Kinda miss him lurking around tonight…
 

By the middle of December, she was again retweeting a sentiment from
Oscar: Everything happens for a reason. Practice some faith in yourself and others. Pray and trust that His will shall prevail…
Soon afterwards she posted her own sentiment:
Love comes from finding someone who makes you feel comfortable with yourself. Almost like finding the other part of yourself.

Clearly she was re-assessing what she expected or wanted from love and romance and a relationship. Theirs was not a consciously public romance in November and December 2012, but they started being seen together at the same events. Reeva told me he was a very, very good man. She was impressed by his charity work and his fundraising projects for children who had lost legs. They shared a love of fast cars, of horse racing and animals. Oscar had two dogs and owned racehorses. On a superficial level, they made a beautiful couple, thrilling gossip columnists with the ultimate high-profile celebrity match of sporting hero and dazzling model. But after one early red-carpet appearance together her publicist, Sarit Thompson, rang me and said, ‘June, I’m very worried. He’s so
possessive
.’ They’d been at an event the night before and he was keeping her away from people. People at the event wanted to talk to her, not him, and he got annoyed about that. Sarit was worried that he had an unnatural obsession for her. He pursued her intently. I gently asked Reeva about this aspect of his personality and she said that on one occasion very, very early in their friendship he had cried and cried because she wouldn’t go out with him. After that, she wasn’t keen on disclosing things about him that she knew I’d worry about or warn her off.

One of the things that would have bonded Reeva and Oscar strongly was their mutual attraction to speed and performance cars. There was another resident on the Silver Woods Country Estate in the east of Pretoria where Oscar had his home, a man called Michael Nhlengethwa who’d done very well and who shared a fascination with sports cars with his neighbour. One day they were admiring a stunning new vehicle when Oscar said he wanted Michael to meet Reeva. He called her out and actually introduced her to him as his ‘fiancée’ – no one had ever heard him say this before. The man put out his hand to shake hers, but she had her arms out to hug him. That was her open heart. And he was overwhelmed.

Another day Reeva called me from a car. She said, ‘Mama, I’m scared. I’m in the car with Oscar and he’s driving like a lunatic at 260 kilometres an hour.’ I asked her to put the phone to his ear and I said to him, ‘Listen, if you hurt my baby, I will have you wiped out’, or words to that effect. I didn’t mean that as a threat, I was trying to keep to the spirit of fun they were obviously having – Darren Fresco, a friend of Reeva’s, was also in the car – but I wanted to make it very clear that he had a responsibility to look after my daughter. I couldn’t bear to think her life was in danger at his hands. He said, ‘Yes, Mrs Steenkamp,’ and Reeva said he slowed down straight away.