Oscar: An Accident Waiting to Happen (18 page)

With Oscar’s and Reeva’s hectic schedules, finding time to spend together was one of the couple’s biggest challenges. After Oscar returned from the Olympic Ball at the end of November, the new couple briefly touched base after 4 December but soon Oscar was off again, this time to Doha, Qatar, in the Middle East where he participated in an unusual interspecies race, competing against an Arabian racehorse to raise awareness for people in the world with disabilities. Hashtagged on Twitter, the #runlikethewind Campaign in Doha, Oscar tweeted: “@DohaGOALS going to be INSANE!” The high-profile race took place on Wednesday, 12 December, at the Aspire Zone in Doha, watched by the Emir of Qatar and the French president, François Hollande.

After Oscar returned from the Middle East, he spent a few days over Christmas with Reeva up in Centurion and Johannesburg and then left for Cape Town on 26 December, after which he went road-tripping with “his boys” to Knysna. While out and about, pictures of him popped up on social networks with one of his exes, Jenna, and a new young blonde woman, Erin Steer, with whom he was seen out clubbing. Sammy and Oscar bumped into each other at a New Year’s Eve party at the V&A Waterfront at a club called Shimmy Beach, but they didn’t speak.

All the while that Oscar was partying in Cape Town, Reeva was up in Pretoria at his home in Silver Woods, looking after his two dogs, Enzo and Silo. On 27 December when asked what she was up to by a friend on Twitter, she replied: “babysitting pooches:)”

A number of tweets of Reeva’s posted during this time point at someone who was alone and somewhat at odds in trying to find things to do while her boyfriend and most of her connections from Johannesburg were down at the coast having a blast.

On 28 December she pensively tweeted, Dec 28 Reeva Steenkamp @reevasteenkamp: “The soul would have no rainbow had the eyes no tears.”

And the following day, on 29 December, Reeva Steenkamp @reevasteenkamp @alexavgitidis: “Putting feelers out for things in Jozi. I’m not a big NYE party animal though! I’d rather drink Moët & meditate at home:)”

Besides those scattered days spent together over Christmas, the whole of December would be over before the couple saw each other again for a few days over New Year in Cape Town, which included some time in Hermanus at the Arabella Golf Estate.

In the eyes of some of Oscar’s friends it looked like 2013 would be the year that Oscar Pistorius was lucky in love. According to various witness statements that emerged during the pre-trial proceedings, he told some of his friends that Reeva could be “the one”.

But despite some people rhapsodising about Oscar’s love for Reeva, there were others in Reeva’s inner circle who were not convinced.

By mid-January 2013 things between the couple began to change. According to housemate Gina Myers’s statement made to the police after the murder, Reeva became withdrawn, quiet and sad. Gina recalled her friend’s demeanour months earlier when Reeva was bubbly and happy, how “girly-girly” Reeva had been when she was dating Francois Hougaard, the rugby player, and how different she had become around Oscar, in the short space of time after they’d met. As the more tortured, darker side of Oscar began to surface, so too did the usually smiley, upbeat Reeva begin to disappear.

Reeva began to regularly tell Gina that Oscar was “too intense”, “too hectic” and “too controlling”. In an interview right after Reeva’s death, in a report that was broadcast to the world on CNN, as Gina sat beside Oscar’s friend Darren Fresco, she began to look uncomfortable, especially when answering questions about the relationship between Oscar and Reeva, as if she were holding something back, saying things like, “there are problems in every relationship”…

In various interviews, Gina’s dad, Cecil, described how the love bubble did not last very long for Reeva and that she soon felt caged in by Oscar’s obsessive attention. After the couple’s first date, Pistorius “would not leave her alone”, Cecil Myers said. “He kept pestering her, phoning and phoning her.”

If he couldn’t get hold of her himself, he would phone her friends, sometimes calling up to 30 times a day… According to Cecil, “Oscar was hasty and impatient and very moody. She told me he pushed her a bit into a corner. She felt caged in. I told her I would talk to him. I told him not to force himself on her. Back off. He agreed, but his face showed me what he was thinking: ‘Oh, this guy is talking nonsense.’”

His comments published in the press resonated with me. This was a side of Oscar that we already knew well. Reeva might have been finding herself in a similar place to the situation that Sammy once found herself in: increasingly confused about her feelings and unsure of Oscar, afraid of his temper outbursts, aware of his preoccupation with guns. Perhaps she had been in a dilemma,
much like Sam had once been, reeling between logic and passion. On the one hand she probably knew he was treating her badly, but on the other hand, when he switched on the charm, apologising and making promises to change and moderate his behaviour, she was hooked in once again and found herself unable to leave…

Despite Reeva voicing misgivings about the relationship, she ignored her instincts and went ahead with planning a surprise for Oscar on Valentine’s Day.

In the days before 14 February, she had put together a collage of pictures of herself and Oscar, asking the Myers family for advice and input. Armed with her love token, the estate’s CCTV footage shows her arriving at Silver Woods in her Mini Cooper.

Oscar can be seen arriving about 10 minutes later in his white BMW…

Reeva did not originally plan to stay overnight with him, because she needed to be up early as she had been asked to give a talk at Sandringham High School the next day as spokesperson in the campaign to stop violence against women. According to the Myerses, however, she apparently changed her mind and her last message to them was: “Hi guys, I’m too tired. It’s too far to drive. I’m sleeping at Oscar’s tonight. See you tomorrow.”

Less than 12 hours later, in the early hours of Valentine’s Day, Reeva’s bullet-riddled body was driven away to the morgue.

When Reeva first started dating Oscar, as a family we used to laugh and say that he had finally met his match. She looked like such a strong, independent woman who had her own life and was very secure. We thought that she would show him a thing or two – there was no way that we could imagine her sitting at home while he was out on the town or agreeing to do everything he demanded her to do.

By all accounts from those who knew her, she always spoke her mind and didn’t mince words. Who knows what she might have said to Oscar that night that could have hit a nerve, and possibly sparked such violence?

Something that remained in my mind is a comment my daughter Sammy made in the days after Reeva’s death. “I don’t think that could ever have happened to me, Mom, because I didn’t push any of Oscar’s buttons.”

I have thought about that sentence many times. I am horrified that my daughter ever had to think like that. Every day I thank God that it wasn’t Sam who was locked behind that bathroom door.

But I am still haunted by the thought that if she had been, how different things might be now.

Since Valentine’s Day 2013 there probably hasn’t been a day that’s gone by that Trish and I, perhaps many of us, all over the world, haven’t wondered what really happened to make it all go so wrong for Oscar. Oscar, the world-famous athlete, an inspiration to so many, a young man who had the world at his feet – who overnight became international headline fodder for all the wrong reasons: accused of murder, led away in handcuffs, weeping in the docks, fallen from grace in such a spectacular way.

As we worked on the book over the past year, slowly small things began to make some kind of sense. It became clear that the cracks, the warning signs, had been building up over a long time: the fast cars, the untruths, the drinking binges, the desperate need to be one of the boys, the broken arrangements and promises, the compulsive phone calls, the crying and weeping, the discrepancies between what he said and what he did…

We both often wondered whether there was a single pivotal moment, a turning point, where it all changed, when he was transformed from a fairly conventional bad boy with behaviour common to entitled sports stars to something a lot more dangerous and sinister.

Trish and I spent many hours talking, dissecting emails, events and social media, looking for answers to this question. We began
conversations and correspondence with a number of experts – psychologists, therapists, sports commentators – hoping they could throw light on our central question: how could it happen that our beloved national hero could find himself accused of such a tragic and sensational murder?

We found that although people were keen to talk, when it came to pinning down permission to quote and cite opinions, they were often a lot more reluctant to be named in this high-profile story. “I would love to help and give opinions,” said one psychologist, “as long as you don’t use my real name when you quote me. I can’t afford to be dragged into the spotlight…”

Another behavioural expert had a similar response. “I definitely have opinions but I would prefer to stay under the radar. Who knows who might come to get me. I have a family to protect.”

And so, Dr A and Dr B were born…

According to both psychologists, Oscar’s amputation is obviously the central factor in any exploration of his personality. According to the experts, losing a limb obviously causes an amputee to suffer some kind of trauma. In Oscar’s case, because he was so young – less than a year old – he stood a better chance of absorbing the trauma than if he had lost a limb later in life. By all accounts, it seemed that his family managed the amputation as well as could be expected. They consulted with a range of experts and worked hard to make Oscar’s post-operative experience as seamless as possible. Almost immediately, they went about making a point of not treating him any differently from his brother Carl and later on his sister Aimee. But it also became clear that he was not allowed to show any vulnerability. That in itself, say both experts, could have created suppressed trauma, which would have affected his sense of self.

“No matter how good and talented an amputee might be, the person who has lost a limb/limbs carries some experience of their loss throughout their lives. Their body is inseparable from their identity,” explains Dr A.

He continued to explain how it was perhaps at this very early age that Oscar began to develop a need to be the hero and
overachiever. At a time when most children his age were crawling and learning to walk, he was faced with the mammoth task of overcoming the pain from the amputation operation as well as adjusting to his life-changing disability. He was now tasked with proving that he was as able-bodied as anyone else. But it didn’t end there. It was not enough to just be the same as everyone, and he needed to go beyond – proving that he was better than the rest; all this began to form an integral part of his identity.

Additionally, once he had to go to school and mix with “normal” able-bodied people, he had to deal with people’s misconceptions and prejudices about prostheses and disabilities. “These responses would definitely have influenced him and his sense of self,” says Dr B.

During his formative development and early years spent learning to come to terms with his disability, his mother, Sheila Pistorius, played a pre-eminent role, working relentlessly to ensure that he would never see himself as being different. She imparted very strong positive messages to encourage him to overcome all possible limitations. Any psychological analysis will look to parental influences that play out throughout one’s life. Experts and research in the area of amputation agree that psychological adjustment to an amputation is highly dependent on being able to integrate physically and functionally.

It seems in Oscar’s case, the way his parents, especially his mother, responded to his amputation had a big influence from that point on.

According to Dr A, “Oscar’s mother’s determination and response to him was key; Oscar speaks a lot about how important she was and the lessons she taught him, which suggests an idealisation of his mother and deep gratitude to her for all that he became.” It appears that many mothers of amputees have collapsed in their own grief as a result of having to amputate their child’s leg. In Sheila Pistorius’ case, she may have overcompensated by making sure that he had an almost abnormally normal life and pushed him way beyond normal expectations, albeit in a loving and caring way. “It would appear that from an early age he was
able to accept his disability, function superbly on the sport field and be accepted by friends and family,” explains Dr A. “Later he would perform and excel on the world stage, not letting his disability affect him in any way.”

When Oscar’s parents divorced before he was seven years old, an event that often has a huge negative influence in a child’s life, it most probably created responses of fear and confusion. His mother worked even harder to make her children, especially Oscar, stronger and self-reliant. Oscar’s father, Henke Pistorius, participated in parenting, but also experienced ups and downs financially, at one point going into bankruptcy, which must have added to a feeling of insecurity in the family. “It appears that Oscar developed a limited emotional repertoire with his father and remained in survival mode for most of his life,” says Dr A.

At school it appeared that Oscar coped and was well adjusted. Says Dr B, “Oscar attempted to normalise incidents of teasing at school in reference to his amputation. He worked hard on adapting to his situation and showed his resilience and his desire to cope. Above all, by all accounts he was determined not to seem different to his peers. As long as it appeared all right on the outside, then it must be all right on the inside.”

All the experts we approached shared the view that Oscar mirrored the same determination in his sporting activities that his mother had displayed in her response to his amputation. They were almost joined at the hip on this.

The sudden loss of his mother, “his ability and his legs”, when he was 15, could therefore be assumed to be perhaps the most significant influence on his development. “Losing his mother, who was so vital in his positive sense of self, must have been almost like enduring a second amputation,” says Dr A.

After her death, instead of grieving or collapsing, he focused harder than ever on winning and achieving. “Anything less from himself would have been a betrayal to the memory of his mother,” says Dr A.

This intense internal pressure resulted in him having extremely high expectations of himself “in honour of his mother”. “It
probably didn’t help that his father, who he says was more of a friend, also pushed and demanded a lot from him. He was clearly praised and validated for his achievements,” says Dr B. Not having a strong paternal figure in his life after his parents divorced and after his mother’s death, in the face of tremendous pressure, it was clear there was a lack of a support system to help Oscar cope. The adults, like coaches and teachers, who tried to support him could not have replaced the loss of his mother’s nurturing and emotional support.

After the loss of his mother, Oscar chose to fend for himself. He refused to move in with members of his extended family after graduating from Boys High, and instead chose to set up a home of his own at the early age of 17. “This indicates his overt sense of self-sufficiency and his overdeveloped qualities of determination and competitiveness,” says Dr B. “Oscar becomes a lonely figure, a solitary soul in a sometimes alien and judgmental society, one who has to conceal his feelings and inner world in fear of it exposing him.”

According to the experts, the defences employed in order to survive are usually denial and suppression, manifesting in responses like: “I am fine” and “I can’t reveal my true feelings”. This was amply demonstrated when he returned to school the same day as he buried his mother and threw himself into sport. “When defences are overly employed, there is often a lack of internal emotional development and adaption,” says Dr A.

The result of this often leads to having a limited ability to deal with uncomfortable emotions. The people affected often appear to be over-demanding and act out their frustrations in inappropriate ways. “They can be very guarded with their emotions and not trust easily,” continues Dr A. “Closeness or intimacy would be a fearful place, and they would either avoid attachment by having multiple relationships to protect themselves or become overly attached and act out obsessively.”

Denying to the public that he was disabled seemed almost a natural extension of the pressures exerted on Oscar by both his parents.

In many interviews, he makes reference to the fact that he is not disabled and even goes as far as mounting a legal case against the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) to be allowed to qualify in competitions as an able-bodied runner. It becomes an all-consuming mission to be seen as normal.

“For any disabled person, the challenge is not only living with disability, but also to live with one’s own perception of the disability. Oscar appeared to have lost touch with the realities around his disability,” says Dr B.

“His self-esteem was marked by him having to show the world that he was able and equal in all respects,” adds Dr A. “In order to achieve this, there would have to have been an element of denial…”

According to both psychologists and a number of sporting experts, the desire to run in able-bodied races was possibly the epitome of his unconscious desire. “The fact that he was so talented gave him the tools to unconsciously prove himself, but as always, one can never do this just by external means. Hence, when things didn’t go his way, there was acting-out behaviour. Because his self-esteem was so intrinsically linked to the outer representation of the self, by that I mean the awards and applause – i.e. overly dependent on external reassurance – the individual is likely to have become very vulnerable when threatened. In these instances, the individual is prone to work even harder for outer validation by increasing the means of stabilising their self-perception,” offers Dr A.

It is clear that Oscar’s self-esteem was dependent on his ability to achieve, to normalise, even neutralise, his disability. He went to great lengths to push himself way beyond normal expectations; to be the best, the fastest and most admired. “But being a poster boy on the outside does nothing to build the inside if there is fear and a sense of self that is determined by what is externally normal,” explains Dr B. It appeared that Oscar was not aware or conscious of his inner fears of failure and disappointing both his parents. He did not grasp, it seems, that although he remembered being loved as a child and having a happy childhood, it was during these formative years that he developed a deep desire for
extreme perfection. “This formula is often the seed of compulsive behaviour,” says Dr A.

His identity was always defined by straddling the fence between being a disabled runner and being normal and acceptable. He played both roles very well. Perhaps what made him famous – being disabled – was also a very painful part to acknowledge, as he had spent his youth and adult life trying so hard to be normal. But he was not normal. His medicine was also his poison.

While he was extremely talented and driven to compete (that compulsion is clear), one can’t help but wonder whether there was ever any place for him to show his vulnerability or weaknesses. It seemed that everyone wanted him to succeed and there were many waiting in line to take a piece of his very lucrative success.

His craving to be accepted and regarded as normal definitely extended to his relationships with women. “These seemed to cause some of his most intense internal feelings of inadequacy and torture,” says Dr B. “He longed for the unconditional, nurturing love his mother had lavished on him, perfection really, but it appears that all of his relationships fell short of such unrealistic ideals.” On one level he seemed to idealise these women and then, possibly sensing they fell short of perfection, he would reject and betray them.

According to both experts his prosthetic legs must have played an important role in contributing to his feelings of insecurity and inadequacies in these relationships.

While the outside world was crowning him with accolades like The Sexiest Man of the Year, revering him for physical perfection, when he got home at night he had to take off his legs and be confronted by his deformity and imperfections. His stumps, often chafed, blistered and bleeding, were harsh reminders of everything he wasn’t. “The more famous he became and the more he was affirmed for his physical attractiveness and prowess, the more the battle between his upper and lower halves intensified,” says Dr B.

Along with the rest of the world, we have spent many hours wondering what exactly was happening in Oscar’s mind in the months, the days, the hours preceding Reeva’s death. It is clear
that Oscar went through a number of significant emotional challenges during that time. Undoubtedly, the most challenging of all was the mental and physical preparation for the 2012 London Olympics. Images of Oscar the Miracle, Oscar the Blade Runner, were everywhere in London as well as in the media all over the world during the Olympics, placing a huge amount of pressure on him. In many ways, Oscar was similar to Princess Diana, in the sense that they were both adored by the world, but deeply insecure and needy inside.