"Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play…it is war minus the shooting."
Reeva
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A mother’s story, June Steenkamp, London, Sphere, 2014 ISBN 978-0-7515-5871-5
“I work out in my own mind what I think happened. They had a fight, a horrible argument, and she fled to the bathroom with her mobile and locked the door. It was 3 a.m. She was dressed in shorts and a top. Her clothes were packed, ready to leave. I think he may have shot once and then he had to go on and kill her because she would have been able to tell the world what really happened, what he’s really like”.
This extract leaves the reader in no doubt what June Steenkamp believes to have happened on Valentine's Day 2013. The book tells a mother's story of hearing the news of her daughter’s and of the trial - with flashbacks to Reeva’s earlier life.
A kind of subplot is the irony of Reeva’s campaign against violence against women in the context of South Africa having the highest murder rate of women by their partners in the world - one every eight hours.
One cannot imagine the pain that June Steenkamp endured dealing with the trauma and then a long and complicated trial. As she puts it, the outcome “was the worst of double whammies – to lose our daughter and then to see her violent death officially deemed an accident”. She cannot believe that the judge believed Oscar Pistorius’ story which – she felt - no one else in the world believed. She felt that he was acquitted of the murder charge only because he had the resources to enable him to hire “the best legal team money could buy to back up a story that fitted around the forensic evidence.
She sees Oscar as controlling and quick tempered, adding “It was Reeva’s bad luck that she met him, because sooner or later he would have killed someone”.
There is a Christian undercurrent in the book but it is a form of Christianity which takes some working out. Reeva is described as “a strong, strong Christian”. On Twitter she describes herself as a child of God and tweets at Christmas: Merry Christmas everyone and Happy Birthday to the greatest man that ever walked the Earth!! At the same time she is portrayed in a matter of fact way as living with boy-friends and believing strongly in her star sign.
June Steenkamp also identifies herself as a Christian saying that she had forgiven Oscar because her religion required her to. Yet she refers constantly to what can only be described as folk religion:
Her friend Jennifer seeing an owl at exactly the time when Reeva died.
“Soon after Reeva died, things started dropping down the chimney… and I take it as a sign.”
“I started to notice little white feathers and I’d think: She’s here.”
“ I’d wake to find a white feather on the balcony. ‘Reeva’s here,’ ... It always cheered me to receive a little sign from her in heaven”.
A white dove sitting on the windowsill. “ I felt it had flown there just for us; it was a sign from Reeva”.
“I had often sensed Reeva’s presence in the courtroom, but not today. I just felt emptiness”.
There is also a disturbing account of a friend consulting a medium and asking Reeva if it was on accident or if it was on purpose and receiving the answer from the medium: “She’s saying it wasn’t an accident”.
Not an easy read but the book gives a real insight into the events of the Valentine’s Day 2013, through the eyes of an insider.