Africa South Africa : Oscar Pistorius of old is gone for good

Flying to South Africa to report on Oscar Pistorius, I went with an open mind about the night he shot and killed his girlfriend, not least because in competing at the London Olympics on prosthetic legs, Pistorius showed it isn’t wise to rush to judgment and that appearances can be deceiving.

Two weeks later, I return home to Europe no closer to knowing or really understanding exactly why Pistorius pulled the trigger of his 9 mm pistol in the early hours of Valentine’s Day.

I’m not convinced we’ll ever know for certain, given that Reeva Steenkamp, the only person other than him in the track star’s villa that night is dead.

I wouldn’t bet on South African police furnishing all the answers. Not after watching scratchy footage of officers attaching a taxi driver by his wrists to the back of their police vehicle and dragging him down a street in a township east of Johannesburg. Mido Macia later died in a jail cell.

This was two weeks after Pistorius killed Steenkamp. The eight officers charged with murder for Macia’s death aren’t the same crack team working the Pistorius case, led by a veteran of the force described as South Africa’s “top detective” by the police commissioner.

Still, the videotaped brutalizing of Macia and missteps by the first chief investigator in the Pistorius shooting, who was subsequently replaced after it emerged that he is facing attempted murder charges, did nothing to inspire confidence in the professionalism of South Africa’s police.

Some here believe Pistorius’ legal and forensic team will concentrate in coming months on picking holes in police evidence and that the two sides might eventually reach a plea deal, avoiding a high-stakes court drama that would be South Africa’s equivalent of the “trial of the century” for O.J. Simpson, the former NFL star acquitted in 1995 in the Los Angeles slayings of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman.

Certainly, Pistorius still has much explaining to do. The “Blade Gunner” tag of newspaper headlines may prove indelible.

 

Credit: George N’kunu

 

Read also:

http://en.africatopsports.com/2013/03/01/case-pistorius-another-twist/


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