OSCAR TRIAL
From Valentine's Day to 9/11
THE Boschkop police station register features an entry that reads “CAS 110/02/2013. Murder.”
It seems incredible that this small police station on the outskirts of eastern Pretoria would be the scene where the wheels were set in motion for a court drama unlike any the world had seen.
It has drawn comparisons to the OJ Simpson murder trial in the US, another massive news event. But Simpson was an athlete known for playing a sport only really followed in the US. And that was before the advent of social media and blow-by-blow accounts of courtroom proceedings.
CAS 110/02/2013 features a global star, a human phenomenon. A true superman. A man who took the cruel fate he was dealt when he was born without fibula in his legs and turned his disadvantage into victory by becoming “the fastest man on no legs”. A man with willpower and determination so strong that he could take on and change the landscape of the world’s most celebrated sports event.
The Olympic Games was 116 years old when it came to London in 2012. And there he was, our golden boy: Oscar Pistorius. Nicknamed the Blade Runner, he stood tall in the arena — the first double-amputee to compete against his able-bodied brothers.
Tuesday will mark exactly two years since Pistorius car-
That the date of Reeva’s death is a universal day of celebrating love resonates with irony
ried the South African flag in the closing ceremony of the Games. It was a moment of celebration.
But that entry in the Boschkop police register has turned his world and that of those who have idolised him upside down.
Pistorius’s place in history will now forever be marked by a single event — the death of his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp.
On the morning of Valentine’s Day 2013, news broke that there had been a shooting at the Blade Runner’s house in the Silver Woods Country Estate in Pretoria.
Hours later, as journalists here and abroad scrambled to get to Pretoria, the reality set in that Pistorius had fallen from grace. An image went viral of him in a grey hoodie being led to a waiting police car outside the police station.
The events of that fateful Valentine’s Day came to a head this week, 18 months later.
In the High Court in Pretoria, the prosecution and defence delivered their final arguments, closing their part in what has been a remarkable trial.
Judgment will be delivered on September 11.
That the date of Reeva’s death is a universal day of celebrating love — Valentine’s Day — and that the day that Pistorius will hear his fate falls on a date universally remembered for a human tragedy, resonates with irony.