Mom’s 5 years of pain
‘Losing her will always be there’
FIVE years after Olympian Oscar Pistorius shot his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp on Valentine’s Day, her mother still grieves as if it were yesterday.
“It’s frozen in my mind,” said June Steenkamp, 71. “The pain of losing her is in my thoughts every day. It will always be there for me. In certain ways her death destroyed part of our lives. It’s the worst thing that could have ever happened to me.
“When Reeva was about four or five, one of my friends said to me, ‘June don’t love things too much, they get taken away from you’. That’s something I’ll never forget. She could see how much I loved my child. That stuck in my mind. And Reeva’s death cemented it.”
The loss of a child, she noted, had no timetable. “One would imagine that after five years it would be easier. But it’s actually not. Some days are still very hard. She was such an inspiring person and devoted to Barry and me. We miss her. She was a shiny light in our lives. She loved us and doted on us. So it’s difficult living without that person. I think I will go to my death with this with me.”
To commemorate Reeva’s death and birthday every year, June and husband Barry head down to Port Elizabeth’s Summerstrand beach.
“After Reeva swam with the dolphins in Tropika, she said it was the best experience of her life. So we spread her ashes in the sea with the dolphins. One year they drifted slowly past us and that felt like she knew we were there. That was so emotional. We float roses in the sea and say a prayer with friends who join us. You often see dolphins there, jumping out of the water but that time they just floated past. It was incredibly peaceful.”
For the rest of the year the Reeva Steenkamp Foundation keeps June’s head up. Launched in 2015, the nonprofit organisation aims to educate children about violence, bullying and abuse.
“I thought straight away of a foundation to protect women, for awareness for them to realise what they were involved in,” says June.
“Violence against women is escalating daily now. Reeva was already working against abuse, now I’m taking the baton and going forward with it.”
June says seeing it making a difference would give her “great pleasure” and “make Reeva incredibly proud of me”.
Her ultimate aim for the foundation is to establish a refuge for battered and abused women. “But financially it’s challenging. We’ve had fund-raising events and we’ve hired a fund-raiser but we need a couple of generous benefactors to back us for several years. That would be wonderful.”
June claims she has moved beyond Oscar Pistorius, who is currently serving a sentence of 13 years and five months handed down by the Supreme Court of Appeal in November last year.
But it’s almost impossible to avoid his name in a conversation about her psychological pain.
“I’ve forgiven Oscar for killing my daughter,” she volunteers. “I’m a Christian. God expects me to forgive. But He doesn’t expect the person not to be punished. He’s got to be punished.”
Pistorius has never been told that he has been forgiven, she confirms. “I haven’t had contact with him. What must I say to man who has killed my daughter? There’s nothing to say.
“If he murdered your daughter, would you want to talk to him? Would you want to personally talk to him? I don’t think so.”
She is also over those Oscar fans who still blame her for his demise. “I don’t take it personally any more. It doesn’t hurt any more.
“One of my friends once said, ‘June you were nothing and nobody until your daughter died’. I was horrified, but I never reacted… If I didn’t walk away, I’d be in an institution by now,” she says.