A Personal View – March 2013

I have never been a fan of Oscar Pistorius mainly because, despite being a road runner myself, I have no real interest in the sport apart from watching Usain Bolt in action. His turn of speed is mesmerising. His galloping style enthrals me as he powers past the opposition.

Of course I will admit that I used to admire Oscar immensely because of the challenges that he had to overcome in order to become a world champion in spite of his impediments.

But this attitude was downgraded from acclaim into grudging respect when Oscar, in fit of pique at the Olympics, challenged his loss by claiming that his opponent had used excessively long blades & hence had an unfair advantage. To me this put Oscar in a very different light. Quite frankly I was disgusted by his behaviour as he had shamed the South African delegation at the event.

For the first time the real Oscar Pretorius started to emerge in my viewpoint and what I saw I did not like. This was not a fragile butterfly emerging from the chrysalis but a repugnant moth. No more was he the venerable handicapped athlete overcoming insurmountable odds to become a world champion.

Then came the fateful & perhaps wilful shots – as the State contends – on Valentine’s Day 2013.

One thing that I cannot abide is guns as I consider them a greater threat to one’s family & friends than to any would-be criminal. In the unlikely event that the weapon is actually required to defend oneself what is the chance that the gun is readily available or alternatively that one is actually able to use it effectively without getting killed in the process.

A prematurely deceased former colleague, who tried to prevent hijackers from stealing his car from his driveway in the Hyde Park area, instead paid the ultimate price by being shot dead. He traded his life for his BMW. What a false bargain!

The fact that Oscar had killed somebody who was behind a door was even more mystifying. This action is expressly forbidden in terms of the proper gun handling procedure. A clear & immediate threat must be present & the target must be visible.

This fact goes to the crux of the man: a gun freak. These are the most dangerous type of gun owner as they will tend to over react to any perceived threat. As an automatic reflex they will draw their gun & commence shooting. By means of this action they will in all likelihood harm not only the perceived attacker but also innocent bystanders.

Now my attitude turned firmly to disgust.

A vibrant young woman on the cusp of a successful career was shot dead through a locked bathroom door in his paranoia about crime in South Africa.

This is precisely the act of an irrational gung-ho gun owner. The ultimate consequence of there being a gun available in this situation is that somebody is killed; tragically it was not the imagined armed assailant but his drop-dead gorgeous girlfriend.

Yet another innocent victim & senseless death!

Irrespective of a tepid personal interest in the trial, the media has been inundating their audience with the minutiae of this trial. It has been difficult not to follow the course of the trial but I was forced to. Even though I never had a real desire to know the sordid details of the case, being armed with all the useless information about the witnesses & their testimony, it allowed one to contribute when the trial became a talking point over coffee at work or while out running.

For most of the time I listened with detachment to these reports except for a few which struck me. The first occasion was hearing Michelle Burger’s testimony about hearing a distraught plaintive scream. This was quite chilling as I could imagine an overwrought woman screaming for her life as it flashed before her eyes.

But yesterday’s testimony was even more striking. It was different. It gave one a glimpse of the future, a future had is not bright & rosy. It was a volatile admixture of the macabre & the voyeuristic. The reading of the What’s App Messages & smses was too personal, too visceral & too revealing. The intimate inner feelings, relationship difficulties & emotions of a couple were exposed in excruciating detail to be mulled over in extremis in a court.

It is equivalent to the ultimate act of bearing one’s soul to the world.

These messages confirmed my suspicions about Oscar. They reveal him to be an extremely insecure & jealous person. As well, they betray Reeva’s fears & concerns about him when she smses him that he “sometimes scares her” not realising that only a few weeks later he would commit the ultimate act of betrayal by killing her.

Apart from the poignancy of these messages, they reveal something more sinister. Our intimate conversations are no longer inviolate. Our private personas have been stripped bare to be replaced with public personas. More importantly Oscar Pistorius is now stark naked for the entire world to judge him & he has been found wanting in many ways.

The man with the whole world ahead of him with millions of adoring fans marvelling at his achievements is now the pariah, the polecat of the world.

How could a gung-ho gun-loving individual with the world at his feet be so insecure despite being at the apex of his game?

How could he run the game of life itself so poorly?

Clearly his strategies, tactics & stratagems were deficient in the race of life?

How could he get it so mistaken to be on the incorrect race track?