To Oscar Pistorius and his team:
While you, Oscar, may be staring into the deepest abyss of your
life, I'm here to suggest that this could, in fact, be the biggest opportunity that has ever come your way. Before you baulk at that thought and dismiss it as absurd, please read my invitation to understand how
a new purpose can help you redeem yourself, your dignity, and possibly that of
a nation.
Everyone knows this is the worst time
of your life. Your story is on the lips of many,
leaving no doubt that at the end of the day you are
guilty for the death of Reeva Steenkamp. Nothing will
ever change that fact. It is impossible for anyone to know how he or she might live with this, not withstanding that
you also stand in the harsh spotlight of the
world's condemnation. The family and friends
that lost a daughter, sister and friend are reminded
that their memory of Reeva
will forever be undermined by the fame of your (mis) fortune.
There are many that say
'your life is over', but what if I were to tell
you that you are standing at the edge of possibly the
most important precipice any individual has ever
been near? Right now, you can go down in history
as the tragic paralympian who's Icarus archetype
saw him burning in a dungeon, or you can seek to address a very real and
frightening issue that South Africans truly understand.
Let's talk about the
level of fear, horror and terror that people live with
on a daily basis in that country. Let's talk about how so many, like you, have
had to make split second decisions to save themselves or their family. As a
South African, when I read the headline on that
fateful Valentine's Day about the shooting of
Reeva Steenkamp, I initially didn't think much of it. I didn't even read the
article. I turned the page and thought, 'Oh, that could happen to anyone in Johannesburg.
That’s reality'.
And therein lies the
problem. This is not 'new' news to South Africans. We read these kinds of stories every day. I know people who have
been in exactly the same situation as you were in, and
luckily for them, they didn't pull the trigger -
on their young child, their wife, their brother, their pet. But some have.
We've all read these stories before. You are no different to every single other
person living in a country ravaged by extreme levels of fear, violence, rage,
rape, and horror. South Africans live against a backdrop of such extreme
violence, leaving them with the propensity for evermore-desperate
behaviour. The courts have sent you to be
assessed for your mental health. But the whole country needs to be assessed for
its mental health. Not a
single person in South Africa has escaped being tarnished
by the constant and persistent level of fear and the hyper
vigilance one has to live with in order to 'just
survive'. I say ‘just survive’ deliberately, because it is not a way to live.
People living
in Europe have simply no
understanding of so many aspects of South African living
conditions: the
gated communities, the security guards, the
alarm systems, the lock and key, the vigilance. Europeans cannot imagine the
need to own a deadly weapon, the anxiety of 'the buck stops here' mentality and
why a person would feel compelled to take security
matters into their own hands.
Well, for South
Africans, the issues are all too clear. Often they cannot trust a
security guard whose family may be targeted if he doesn’t let an intruder in.
They certainly cannot trust an inadequate
police force that, as the world has observed, bumble their way through crises. So
South Africans implement whatever measures fit their
individual circumstances in order to feel safe: the electrified perimeter gates and
fences and the fierce dogs, the private (armed)
security firms, the elaborate alarm systems, the locked and gated bedrooms at
night. Some draw the line at owning a
weapon that can kill, but I know many a peacekeeper that
will hold a weapon as their last line of defense.
No one can say what
anyone would do when staring down the barrel of a
loaded gun in a state of abject fear - this is life or death. Europeans
cannot even imagine what it would be like to live under these conditions. In England, if you get burgled, the worst that would happen is that your
things may be taken or you might get beaten but
very rarely do we hear on the news that someone has
been killed in a burglary. It's not
impossible and it certainly makes headline news, but citizens in the UK are not
faced with horror stories of people being tortured or raped in front of their
loved ones, children forced to watch their parents suffer and then scalded in hot water to death. I can't bear to continue listing stories that for South
Africans is daily fare. We live against this backdrop. The background
stories in our heads are flooded, overwhelmed by unimaginable horror. It’s a recipe for disaster at every level and so, when
fear races through your body at 2.00 in the morning, it could very well
not be the personal, years-of-internal-terror monster in the nightmare that has
awoken you, but a very real and present threat. It’s hard to say this, but your
story is not the worst one I’ve heard.
And if that isn't enough
for anyone to start questioning the real problems in South
Africa, how about the alarming statistic
that the private security firms in South Africa employ
more people than the police force and army put together? And yet, we are still
not safe. What the hell is going on?
Now, don't get me wrong.
I'm not trying to excuse you from your deed. That's not my intention. People make decisions as to how to live
under those circumstances every day. Some people cannot tolerate them and leave their beloved country. You are not
alone; you’re just in the (un)fortunate position
of having been the nation’s
hero, Oscar Pistorius. It's irrelevant to me
what psychological profile you have. If I lived in the environment South
Africans live in on a daily basis, and I couldn't even run, let alone fight, and I was faced with a potentially brutal intruder,
yes, I too, may make the decision to own a gun. Flaunting that is another
matter, but is that really what our attention should be focused on right now, given how ravaged by
violence South Africa is?
Oscar, the bottom line
is that there is no mercy for your crime because
you did kill your love. It is an unimaginable
horror that you will have to live with for the
rest of your life. But Oscar, the nation needs
you. You have an opportunity, with the spotlight
on your trial, to
expose the absurd levels of fear, rage, horror and crime
that South Africans deal with daily. You could
begin to challenge the government for not even
remotely doing enough to protect its people. This needs to be the biggest
agenda in the South African government. You and
your team could make this your agenda and make a
difference to millions of peoples’ lives. Think
about it.
I recently saw an exhibition of photographs to commemorate the twentieth
anniversary of the Rwandan genocide by South African photographer Pieter Hugo.
Called 'Portraits of Reconciliation', Hugo’s photographs show Hutu
perpetrators standing next to their Tutsi victims, all
of them having participated in a formal pardon and forgiveness process called the AMI Reconciliation Project. It was galling
to read the level of horror inflicted upon the
victims, yet, despite this, and sometimes only out of the
practical necessity of reconciliation, the
victims were prepared to offer their
forgiveness. Some are strained, others not. What
becomes clear is that there is something incredibly healing in the practical
offering of help or support towards the person harmed
who had, often, been left utterly destitute by the degree of their loss.
There was a strange sort of redemption for both victim and perpetrator in this
committed act of service. It seemed to make more sense to me that sometimes
forgiveness requires concerted action. It requires
service for forgiveness to be possible. The capacity to heal is always far
greater than the inflicted wound.
So, Oscar, as I
said, whether it's from behind bars or not, you could seriously turn the eradication of crime and violence in South Africa into your
life’s purpose. It's obvious that South Africans become accustomed to the conditions that they
live under. How else do they cope with the palpable daily fear of losing a loved one, if not from a vicious intruder then from their very own wrong judgment? I know of nothing more tragic. A trial seems almost
theatrical against the backdrop of a country that prepared you, psychologically
and otherwise, for your very own demise.
With the level of media attention that your
story holds, who can imagine how much of a spotlight you personally could bring to
this issue in a most glorious land? Ironically, you have the
potential to be the biggest factor in exposing a
failing government and resolving the issue of the
unacceptable levels of crime and violence in South Africa. You could
capture the nation, and perhaps, in time, the
nation may look back at the service you gave to
your country and reclaim its once beloved hero.
Manuela Viana
East Sussex
England
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