Reeva: A Mother's Story (25 page)

Legacy

The morning after the verdict, I found a feather, a little white one, just in front of where I had put my make-up in the bedroom. ‘She’s back,’ I smiled to myself. If she had been with me in spirit in the courtroom for the verdict she’d have realised the way it was going. Maybe that was why I couldn’t sense her on the second day. She decided not to hang around and see us suffer. She wouldn’t wish Oscar harm – she believed in karma and what goes around comes around and all that – but she wouldn’t have wanted to listen to the judge’s conclusion at all. She was not resting in peace.

The feathers lift me so much. I’ve found them on the balcony at the guest house, on the windowsill in our room at the High Court, and once on the guest-house doorstep as we were leaving for court.

‘Ah, here’s a feather,’ I said.

‘And…?’ said Tania.

I explained that it was Reeva sending me a sign, at least in my heart that’s what I think.

‘She’s letting me know that she’s here with me.’

Well, turn the taps on. Tania was finished by the time we got to court.

‘I’m sorry,’ she sniffed. ‘It’s just the thought of it.’

I find feathers in the oddest places at home as well. It’s a Reeva and me thing, because of the pact we made years ago. The more I think about it, the more I wonder if she somehow knew she hadn’t long to live. She was so busy, you know. She was such a people person. She packed so much in and drew so many people to her. She came, she did her good, and now she’s gone: a beautiful soul. As Mrs Ntlangu of St Dominic’s Priory suggested so poignantly, ‘We in the world want the cream. Maybe God also wants the cream in heaven?’ Even as a very young woman, Reeva always spoke as if she’d considered her role in life. I see that now, and not only in her farewell speech on
Tropika
when she mused that it was not just your journey in life but the way that you go out and make your exit that is so important, you can either make a positive or a negative impact. Even back in 2005, when she was a finalist in the
Herald
Miss PE modelling competition, she stood on the stage and said she hoped to show young women in Port Elizabeth, and perhaps South Africa, that while it was important to have a professional ambassadorial role with a career, it was also important to be young and spirited and free.

We must never forget what Reeva stood for. She loved people. She loved everybody; and it was her heart that went out to engage people. She was someone who stood out – in her family, at school, in her career, among her friends – for having an innate way of fitting in, for trying to excel in everything and for appreciating every little blessing in life. It’s important for me to hold on even to those tiny everyday things she taught us because they make us smile, like remembering the back section when I do my hair or keeping the fridge orderly.

We are all finding our own way of coping. Abigail told me her fondest memories are of her and Reeva lazing around, drinking tea, painting their nails and talking about their future. She remembers how the girls would be going somewhere and Reeva would say let’s stop and smell the roses. ‘It’s amazing how I do those things now,’ Abby said. ‘She taught me a lot about stopping to look at the good things in life instead of always being on a mission.’ Every day she thinks of Reeva teaching her how to put on mascara because it always puts a smile on her face. (For the record, it involves placing the wand deep into the base of your eyelashes and mushing it left and right before brushing up through the lashes to create length.)

Like most of us, Abby feels no hatred for Oscar. As she sees it, wherever he goes in this world his life as he knew it is finished, and that’s karma in her view. But the circumstances of Reeva’s death trouble her. They were due to Skype each other on Saturday 16 February and update each other about what was going on in their lives. As they were both so interested in spirituality and the power of intuition, Abby told me she decided to seek out a medium in London to see if she could get some answers. Two weeks before she died, Reeva, a Leo, had posted on her Twitter account:

Leos wish they had phones up in heaven, so they could talk to people they miss.
 

Abby researched it very carefully. The person she chose knew nothing about her. And her experience was quite extraordinary. She told me a spirit guide came through to her who said she had a young girl, and she’s beautiful and she’s got long curly dark hair and she’s standing behind a door. The guide said she’s very shy, no, she’s not shy, she’s a bit sheepish, almost like you might not want to speak to her. Okay, she’s saying sorry, she’s so sorry, she should have listened. Abby asked the medium if she could ask a question. ‘I said I wanted to know if it was on accident or if it was on purpose, and if it was on purpose, do you take responsibility for putting yourself in that situation?’ She did not reveal what ‘it’ was. The medium said ‘She’s saying it wasn’t an accident, and she’s sorry for being there.’

If this tragedy had happened to one of her friends, Reeva would have been devastated. That’s how she was, always caring for others. Family and friends meant the world to her. I want to channel her qualities into her legacy. Reeva believed love was all; that giving love and sharing love is such a positive emotion. Even when I got Bella, my puppy, eight months after Reeva died, she helped me so much to get through some dark months. I had to nurture her and she gave me so much love in return. From living a normal, quiet life I’ve had to come and live in the public eye, and I’ve had so much love from people. Wherever I go, people want to hug me. Reeva has inspired that love and that’s a wonderful thing. It brings out the caring side in other people. As her mother, I loved her to the moon and around the world. We had the closest mother-daughter bond imaginable; we were the best of friends. But now I see Reeva Steenkamp has come to represent something much more resonant too.

Immediately after 14 February 2013, her name and image became the rallying point for campaigns against domestic abuse and gun violence. After the verdict, and Oscar Pistorius’s culpable homicide conviction, her name became part of a debate about the South African judicial system – which again seems ironic for a law graduate whose ambition was to shine a spotlight on causes close to her heart. The law has deemed her fate to be the tragic result of someone else’s recklessness and negligence. Some of the most senior attorneys in South Africa have expressed astonishment at the verdict. Oscar can’t be tried again. He’s had his trial and he’s won. If he was a man in the street who didn’t have money, he wouldn’t have won in my opinion. The best legal team won. It cost him a lot of money, reported to be at least R100,000 per day. There had to be a winner and a loser, and we lost. Kristin, who studied law with Reeva, says she knew it would be difficult. The law is what it is. Our legal system is what it is. She was disappointed that we didn’t get answers but her view is that the overwhelming public sentiment means he will live now in a permanent prison.

Sheena Jonker, who wrote that strong open letter to Oscar before the trial opened, gave her perspective on Facebook: ‘What happened in Oscar’s trial is how the system is designed to operate: the accused is presumed innocent until proven guilty, does not have to prove his innocence, but can test the state case to see if it is strong enough to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, all the while simply advancing a version that may possibly fit with often compromised forensics. Compromised forensics in themselves are often enough to raise the requisite reasonable doubt, which is the only burden the defence has, to raise a reasonable doubt. So in this system if you can pay for brilliant lawyers, this is often how things look. And within our legal framework, this is not unjust. But if one applies philosophies of natural justice, it is unjust. And it is not dissimilar all over the world and in other systems. The entire system operates on what facts can actually be established (proved) in court. And this often rails against the truth. South Africans beat themselves up wanting to see ‘justice’ in court. The truth is, a competitive adversarial system is just not the best platform for truth and justice. The truth may emerge, it may not. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn’t. And ultimately it is dependent on which side has the best lawyers and that is dependent on who can afford the best lawyers.’

People tell me the trial has also highlighted the problems inherent in broadcasting from criminal courts. It was a political decision to air it. Both sets of lawyers opposed televisation because it can inhibit witnesses and rouse extreme public feeling. Look at the OJ Simpson case in the United States and the Amanda Knox trial in Italy. It takes a long time to qualify, practise and understand law, but people watching snatches on TV become instant experts, confuse the issues and lambast the system. In the United Kingdom, Lord Chief Justice Lord Thomas said he had been ‘very troubled’ by what has happened in South Africa and proposed a ‘pause’ before going much further with televised proceedings in Crown Courts.

We’ll leave those debates to the experts. As Barry says, we just have to carry on with our normal lives. We’re not the only ones in the world going through a crisis. We have to start life afresh. My way of dealing with the pain is to keep Reeva’s spirit and ambitions alive. After the de-humanising affect of the court case, I want to reclaim Reeva as the caring, loving and moral human being she was and to re-assert the values she lived by. I’m not going to shrivel up and die. We plan to build a women’s shelter in her name in Port Elizabeth. We’re going to establish the Reeva Rebecca Steenkamp Foundation and raise money to build and run a shelter to give vulnerable women the skills and confidence to support themselves. That will be a fitting legacy. There is a need for support, security and protection beyond restraining orders. We want to provide not just a safe house, but a haven where women can learn how to be productive and support themselves independently. No one should have to tolerate ill treatment, but sometimes women do to keep a roof over their children’s head. Education is key; the women can learn to bake, to knit, to study for a profession, to expand their horizons and regain their self-esteem.

Reeva was a gift, so precious. She was taken from us in her prime, not just at the height of her personal blossoming, but at a stage when she was poised to acquire a deeper role-model status in South African society. As Mrs Ntlangu said, our country has lost a role model: ‘For us, as a country, to move forward, we need to communicate the races of this country and work together and Reeva was just that link. She loved people without barriers. For some people it’s a new thing to work in this diverse world, but that child knew how to do it instinctively. She never saw colour in a person. She went out in the world and found it easy to work with people of all races, all backgrounds. The sad thing is that she could have changed the world.’

The past six months have been emotionally draining and physically wearing. I’ve had enough of sitting passively in court. I’ve always been a doer. I am busy planning a visit to an exemplary centre where I will learn how to set up and run a women’s shelter on a professional and holistic model. It will be a multi-layered operation. It will be important to provide a support system with a network of doctors, nurses, centre mothers, attorneys, psychiatrists, teachers, all sorts of professionals, to enable these women to change their lives and regain their self-respect.

I’m sure this is what Reeva would have wanted as a legacy. She had taken the cause of vulnerable women and children to heart. To have her name emblazoned on an inspirational women’s shelter will fulfil the ‘professional ambassadorial’ role she sought for herself as a young finalist in the Miss PE modelling competition while she is out there swimming with the dolphins, for ever young and spirited and free.

The Sentencing

On Tuesday 21 October 2014, Oscar Pistorius was sentenced to five years imprisonment for killing Reeva. Judge Thokozile Masipa also gave him a three-year suspended sentence for the firearms charge. The trial that had dominated our lives for nearly eight months ended with the sight of Oscar being taken down the stairs to the cells. He looked resigned. His family said they would not appeal; they had expected him to go to prison.

I felt so much better. Barry too. We feel justice has been done. We were happy with the sentence – five years is sufficient. Oscar will spend at least ten months incarcerated and it is right that he should pay for his actions. It was crucial to me that the sentence was also a message to society. I felt Judge Masipa gave a balanced consideration of the mitigating and aggravating arguments. She said ‘a non-custodial sentence would send the wrong message to the community. On the other hand, a long sentence would also not be appropriate either, as it would lack the element of mercy.’ She made the point that it would be a sad day for South Africa if there was a perception that it had one law for the rich and another for the poor.

We went to court hoping that the punishment handed down would fit the crime, and we left satisfied. It’s been a long, long, harrowing journey and we are happy it is over. No sentence can ever provide absolute closure for us. Nothing can – unless someone can magic Reeva back. The man who took her life has to serve his time, but I don’t want him to suffer. The Department of Correctional Services proved they will be able to cater for his special needs, and that was important to me. He will be well looked after.

After our disappointment with the verdict of culpable homicide, I said I was never going back to court. I changed my mind, however, because there had been talk of an appeal and of the judge having made a mistake with her summation, and I wanted to fill the courtroom with representations of how loved Reeva was. We wore her picture on our jackets, on water bottles, on notepads. Friends and family returned to Pretoria to hear the arguments in aggravation and mitigation of the sentence knowing it would be another ordeal during which Oscar’s defence team would call witnesses to emphasise everything he had lost, how much he was suffering, how vulnerable he was – and those arguments were always hard to sit through when our daughter, an innocent, lost her life and future and suffered a terrible death. Even the actual handing down of the sentence was like a seesaw – up, down, up, down – because the judge had to evaluate all the factors she had accepted or dismissed to explain how she reached the decision that was hers, and hers alone.