I happened to be in South Africa once during the Apartheid era and saw a cricket match in Capetown - a possible future story in itself - and have been fascinated by the 'Rainbow Nation' ever since. It seems that the legal system is a mixture of Roman-Dutch law - the Dutch were there first of course (not counting the Portuguese who preferred to settle elsewhere) and English law, following the large number of British migrants in the 19th century.
Pretoria where Oscar's trial for the murder of his girl friend Reeva Steenkamp is taking place was once a solidly Dutch (or Afrikaner) city, and even after Mandela and the rise of the (Black) ANC, judging by the people the camera picks up, most of the participants are still white even today. In fact one of the few people in the court who isn't white is the lady judge. It seems she is to decide the case alone without a jury; but for the rest the procedure seems to be very similar to our Crown Court. In particular the system is adversarial - very much so judging by the way the prosecutor is currently attacking the Defendant in the witness box. The judge in contrast remains silent, apparently writing things down all the time. (Actually the last pictures I saw showed two people flanking the judge, so I'm not 100% sure if the lady is really sitting alone.)
I have a college friend who is retired in Cape Town lives in a gated compound. This is because the crime rate is so high. It would seem that Oscar must live in a similar place as most of the witnesses for the prosecution were white, almost entirely Afrikaners. Afrikaans remains one of the official languages of South Africa, but until this trial began I had thought it was on the way out. But amazingly even the police chief in charge of the investigation gave his testimony in Afrikaans and they had to use an interpreter so that the judge could understand! The current exchanges between Nel (the prosecutor) and Pistorius are in English, but it seems clear that both men would be happier speaking in Afrikaans.
Is he guilty? I won't anticipate the verdict, but the whole thing seems distinctly odd, and rather bad for Oscar. Surely one would have checked where one's girlfriend was before firing through the toilet door. Nel also appears to have shown that Oscar is a bit bad-tempered and likes guns.
One thing I remember about the Para-Olympics in London was when Oscar, the hot favourite for one of his track events, was beaten, he was most ungracious and complained about the length of the winner's blades. He rather lost my support then - before that I had thought him rather a good chap, and a good ambassador for disabled sport. Anyway I suppose there will be a re-examination of Pistorius by the Defence lawyer, and some of the damage one by Mr Nel might be reversed. We shall see.
Kit Villiers
