Reeva: A Mother's Story (17 page)

It’s a beautiful day! Make things happen. Starting my day off with a yummy healthy shake from my boo
#healthyliving.
 

I don’t know what things she made happen in her day, but she did not betray any disquiet when I spoke to her as she arrived at 286 Bushwillow Street, Silver Woods Country Estate, to cook Oscar a romantic dinner. She’d bought cooked chicken breasts, yoghurts and cheese. In her bag she had packed a specially wrapped photograph of the two of them and a Valentine’s Day card. The front of the card read: ‘Roses are red, violets are blue…’ Inside, she had written, ‘I think today is a good day to tell you that… I love you.’

It’s heartbreaking to think she would not come out of those gates alive. Her Valentine’s gift and card would remain unopened for months. He did not have anything for her.

Something was not right, I’m sure. Reeva would never talk at length about their romance, but she had confided to me that she hadn’t slept with him. They’d shared a bed, but she was scared to take the relationship to that level. She had only had two boyfriends, Wayne and Warren, both long-term romances of five or six years each which ended, ultimately, in friendship. She wouldn’t want to sleep with Oscar if she wasn’t sure. I believe their relationship was coming to an end. In her heart of hearts, she didn’t think it was making either of them happy. Security cameras showed Reeva smiling as she greeted the guard at the Silver Woods security gates. Scroll back a few frames on the CCTV images, though, and she looks totally miserable. Oscar arrived in his car about half an hour later. Barry and I both feel something had been brewing between them. We believe from 1 a.m. they were fighting – as vouched by the neighbour who said they heard a couple arguing. There is no doubt in our minds that something went horribly wrong, something upset her so terribly that she hid behind a locked door with two mobile phones. We’re sure there’s more to the story than what Oscar has produced so far. Four mobile phones were found in the bathroom, suggesting that either of them could have received a Valentine’s Day message from another admirer that might have sparked a row. Her clothes were packed. There is no doubt in our minds: she had decided to leave Oscar that night.

Open letter to Oscar Pistorius from Sheena Jonker, Human Rights Activist:

Dear Oscar

I have wanted to write to you for some time. I think the time is now.

I am sorry that you are going through what you are. I am sorry that Reeva lost her life in such a violent way. I am sorry she lost her life at all. I am sorry that, whatever the circumstances, you were ultimately the one who ended a beautiful life. And now your life (which cannot be viewed separate from your freedom) is on the line. And so are the lives of many that are subject to perpetual cycles of violence. And now, indeed, the profile of our beautiful country itself is on the line.

Here is the truth: at this point, no one knows the truth, but you. You are the custodian of what really happened on the night of Valentine’s day last year.

All I can say is that you have a story to tell. Tell it with courage. Take South African Society into your confidence. Take the world into your confidence. Tell that story. Don’t hold back. The truth has high value, and it is ultimately the truth that sets us free.

If you have advisors that are helping you to advance a version that could fit with (possibly compromised) forensics. If you know that that version is actually untrue, rise up in courage and tell the truth. Violence, especially that against women and children, is a problem for us all. And we all need to be part of the solution. The bare, raw, painful truth of what happened on that night, told out of a place of courage, has so much power to transform the problem we have. Your story has the power to change many lives. Your story has the power to save many lives. Your story, told truthfully, has the power to save your own life. Set you free.

If you are surrounded by brilliant advisors that are, as they ethically can, ‘testing the state case’, tactically playing an artificial rules-based evidence system that is susceptible to muting or shutting down massive tracts of truth, don’t. Don’t partake in playing a system where you know you can win, but you were wrong. A system, where you can be right in the argument, but wrong in substance. That’s not justice.

As I said earlier, you are the custodian of the truth here. Only you. The stakes are high. You have a responsibility based on who you are as a human, and the profile you have internationally, to steward that truth. It will take strength and courage.

All of us are capable of harm. All of us are capable of ending lives even. If I make a call to eat a burger whilst driving my car, for instance I can end a life in an instant. Or many lives. Your story and the circumstances are obviously very different. Each of us have capacity for harm in different ways and to various degrees. But let’s talk about it. Let’s know the truth, as ugly and as painful as it may be. And then let’s decide, as a society, as humanity, how we go about using the cold hard truth to transform. To heal.

But don’t look around for others to blame. That’s what cowards do. And you have shown that you have the capacity for great courage in many ways. Don’t make South Africa the fall guy. Don’t bring more harm to an already harmed situation. Don’t be that guy, Oscar. Much is at stake. And the whole world is watching.

It’s not too late. It’s not too late to be everything you were destined to be. Take courage. Rise up. Be strong. Tell your story. Be that guy. Be the guy that tells the truth, no matter how hard. And is willing to do whatever it takes to clean up the mess. Who knows, you may just change the world, starting with your own life.

Be that guy, Oscar.

Peace.

Sheena Jonker

The Trial

For more than a year I had been trying to work out the emotional background to my daughter’s needless violent death: what had been going on in her life that she could end up in such a situation with such a man? On 3 March 2014, it was time for the official truth-seeking process to begin at the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria. I had been warned I’d find the trial a ‘trial’ in every sense of the word, but, comfortingly, public opinion too was willing the truth to emerge. Here, at last, we hoped to resolve the mystery of how our polished, organised and self-possessed daughter came to meet such a messy end, leaving so many unanswered questions. On the day the news of her death broke, her close friends had all called each other to find out if she’d confided anything to anyone that might shed light on what had happened, but, although everyone knew Oscar had a temper, no one knew of anything that could have triggered such an escalation. We all wanted answers.

To understand the process, I took it day by day, fact by fact, starting from the moment Oscar Pistorius was sensationally charged with Reeva’s murder on 15 February 2013. Later that year, he appeared in court again for a bail hearing and then an indictment hearing; both sessions in court yielded details which would become significant points in the trial as the state opened its case against him.

During the bail hearing on 19 February – the day on which we held Reeva’s funeral service – both the prosecution led by Gerrie Nel and the defence stated that Oscar had fired four shots through a locked toilet door, hitting Reeva three times. Gerrie Nel claimed that Oscar had put on his prosthetic legs, walked across his bedroom to the bathroom and intentionally shot Reeva through the door. He argued that the time taken to pick up the gun, put on his legs and walk down the corridor was enough to establish the murder as premeditated. The defence team, meanwhile, said Pistorius did not put on his prosthetics and claimed that he thought Reeva was in bed and that the person in the toilet was an intruder. The bail hearing went on for four days and set out the basic positions of both camps. The chief investigating officer, Hilton Botha – the policeman who had called me that terrible morning to tell me my daughter was dead – told of a witness who had heard gunshots coming from Oscar’s house, followed by a female screaming and then further gunshots. He said the trajectory of the gunshots indicated they had been fired downward and directly toward the toilet. On 22 February the bail hearing ended with Chief Magistrate Desmond Nair concluding that the state had not convinced him that Pistorius posed a flight risk and that bail could be fixed at one million rand.

On the same day, we learnt Botha was to be removed from the case following revelations that he was facing attempted murder charges dating from an incident in 2009. He was replaced by Vineshkumar Moonoo, the most senior detective in the South African Police Service. Six months later, on 19 August – when we should have been celebrating Reeva’s thirtieth birthday, a day which instead we spent quietly with Michael and Lyn – Oscar attended Pretoria Magistrates’ Court again to be served with an indictment for murder, plus an additional charge of illegal possession of ammunition. On 20 November, he was served with new indictment papers containing the two extra charges of firing a gun in a public space.

The trial was set to take place from 3–20 March, and later extended to 16 May. Within that period, the court was set to adjourn after proceedings on 17 April, returning on 5 May, to accommodate scheduling conflicts of the prosecution. Each proposed re-scheduling drew out the sense of the big ordeal facing us. I was anticipating a long haul. The trial was assigned to Judge Thokozile Matilda Masipa, who then appointed two assessors, Janette Henzen du Toit and Themba Mazibuko, to flank her on the bench and help evaluate the evidence presented by prosecution and defence in order to reach a verdict. We just had to live in limbo and await the start of the trial. On 25 February 2014, Judge President Dunstan Mlambo ruled that the entire trial could be broadcast live via audio and that parts of the trial could be broadcast live via television – namely the opening and closing arguments, the testimony of consenting state witnesses, the judgement, and the sentencing, if applicable. I was still in two minds about the televisation process. The media attention and consequent public hunger for more analysis and comment about the case would make it a much bigger ordeal for us, but I hoped the spotlight would also highlight the unsavoury issue of gun violence and help precipitate some positive outcome for society.

When Masipa was announced as the judge, I read her whole life story. The judge and the assessors would decide if Oscar Pistorius intentionally killed our daughter or if he genuinely thought she was an intruder and thereby killed her by accident. South Africa does not have trials by jury because it is nearly impossible to find jurors who have not been influenced by the racial effects of apartheid. I was curious to find out as much as I could about her.

The first thing I noticed was that she is exactly the same age as me and that gave me a good feeling about her. She is a mother and a grandmother as well, I thought. As a High Court judge, she has a reputation for being extremely thorough and fair to everyone – and for having no mercy for abusive men. Famously, she had handed down a life sentence to policeman Freddy Mashamba for shooting and killing his wife, Rudzani Ramango, in a row over their divorce settlement, concluding that he was not above the law and that he was a killer, not a protector like he was supposed to be. In another case, she sentenced serial rapist and robber, Shepherd Moyo, to 252 years in jail after he was arrested and tried following a seven-year crime spree. She told him she was troubled by his lack of remorse.

Judge Masipa comes from Soweto, the township famous for the anti-apartheid youth uprisings in the 1980s. Her mother died when the family were still young and she had to support them. Despite those responsibilities, she was determined to do something with her own life. She was born in 1947, one year before apartheid, or racial segregation, became an official ideology that was supported by a leading political party in the 1948 political elections. In 1974, she received a Bachelor of Arts degree, specialising in social work, and worked in the townships with women challenged by poverty, apartheid issues and domestic violence. She felt the need to air the injustices she witnessed on a daily basis and began a career as a journalist. In the mid-1970s she was arrested after demonstrating with fellow women journalists against the apartheid regime’s attempts to suppress a newspaper she worked on – and spent a night in jail. Working as a crime reporter for
The World
,
Post
and
The Sowetan
newspapers ignited her interest in law which she set out to pursue as a career. Her background and motivation to go into law resonated with me, too, as I felt it echoed Reeva’s long-term ambition to use her public profile to highlight injustices.

In 1990, the same year that Nelson Mandela was released from prison, Masipa received a law degree from the University of South Africa and in her late forties began practising as an advocate. In 1998, she became the second black woman to be appointed a judge in the High Court of South Africa, following Constitutional Court judge Yvonne Mokgoro and High Court judge Lucy Mailula. Today, she is still part of a minority as one of 76 female judges in a pool of 239. Much was made of her selection for the trial against Oscar Pistorius – not least the fact that her courtroom would mirror modern South African society with a Zulu judge raised in a township presiding over two Afrikaner lawyers and a wealthy Afrikaner accused – but the Department of Justice insisted the appointment was a routine allocation of court cases and not a special selection. Would her perspective nevertheless prove crucial?