Call for justice can sound a lot like baying for blood
Does this trial satisfy a hunger for public execution? asks Sipho Hlongwane
DURING humanity’s less enlightened times, it was common for a criminal to be publicly executed. It was not unheard of in the Middle Ages for a gallows to be erected in a public space and men and women to be hanged in full view of their neighbours. In 1649, King Charles I of England was beheaded in front of a crowd of spectators.
In the Roman epoch, the public execution of a criminal had been elevated to an art form. Justice was public entertainment as criminals were forced to battle to the death in coliseums across the empire.
We do not do that anymore. Justice is congruous with a fair trial, and few things are less fair than a trial by the public.
But even with the justice system that prevails today, the public gaze is recognised as a strong influence. This is especially true in countries such as the US or UK, where a jury may decide a person’s guilt or innocence. But it is not any less of an influence in countries such as ours, where these matters are trusted to a college of legal scholars.
The matter is made more complex by the right to freedom of expression in democratic societies. The public is no longer involved as a matter of panem et circenses (bread and circuses), but as a matter of right.
Before the trial of Oscar Pistorius could start, the court had to make a decision about how public it would be. It had no choice. Ever since that awful day in February 2013 when the paraplegic athlete shot and killed Reeva Steenkamp in his home, the incident had been discussed exhaustively in the press, broadcast media and, of course, social media. Journalists who were otherwise obscure gained a massive international Twitter following overnight as people around the world tracked the development of the #OscarPistorius murder case.
The media wanted to broadcast the whole thing. Primedia and MultiChoice approached the high court for access and, naturally, Pistorius’s counsel contested the application. They argued that the mere presence of broadcast media would affect the case by weighing on the minds of the witnesses.
Gauteng Judge President Dunstan Mlambo said that he had before him a clear contestation of rights. His job was to balance and reconcile them, not choose one over the other.
But he also noted that the media was planning to hold a trial of sorts, and he did not like that (MultiChoice is planning to have legal experts and opinion-givers to study the proceedings and deliver opinions to viewers).
The media have a unique power to distort information, he noted, and could potentially lead the public astray.
It was therefore necessary to control how the media relayed the court proceedings. And what restrictions he placed, allowing just a handful of remote-controlled cameras. None of the close-ups that TV loves so much. This would not be a circus if he could help it.
But why are we interested? We, the public? Interested in the same way that motorists slow down and gawp at a road accident? Are we watching the trial because we have come, in our own way, to delight in public execution?
Pistorius may not lose his life over what he did, but in all the ways that count this trial will kill him.
Mlambo acknowledged the huge, global attention that is
The public gaze is recognised as a strong influence, even in South Africa
now turned to the High Court in Pretoria. He gave us what we wanted.
Sadly, very little of this focus will be on Steenkamp or her family. We want the details of her death — where Oscar stood when he shot through the door, where the blood went, who saw what — but we do not want to know about or participate in the grieving for a life that was cruelly cut short. We are not here for Steenkamp. We want to watch Pistorius die.
Hlongwane is a journalist and award-winning columnist