When Oscar Pistorius shot his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp early on Valentine's Day the world's media mobilised and decamped to South Africa. You know the story. The jostling crowds, the photographers, the photos, the headlines, The Bathroom Door of Death, but mostly the public crucifixion of Pistorius. It was relentless. On Twitter, on talk radio, public comments on articles, journalists showed bias, there were old women throwing him with flowers as he arrived and a mob on social media who wanted him hung, drawn and quartered and broken on a wheel. Tempers and tears and vomit.
In the South African judiciary, you are presumed innocent until found guilty. This was a luxury denied to Pistorius who, in my opinion, will never be forgiven by the public - no matter how much remorse or regret he shows.
During Oscar's trial a family was axed to death on a luxury enclave outside the picturesque Stellenbosch. The two parents, one adult sibling smashed and chopped with raw blunt force that bone segments protruded from the skulls. Miraculously the teenage daughter survived - but only just. She has no memory of the night.
The other survivor is the youngest son, a strapping blond man with sad blue eyes and the built of a fit 20 something lad. Despite having shared a bedroom with the brother who was hacked and left to drown in his own blood, Henri van Breda claims he fainted and fended off the attacker and survived with scratch type abrasions here and there, a superficial stab wound and a bruised eye.
The van Breda case is so much more graphic, so much more horrific - and I use the word in its proper context - than a shooting, which by comparison is far less messy. To axe someone to death means a close personal struggle. You are part of the action, you presumably hear them gurgle or scream and see them panic and then you lay into them with such force that you break and splinter their skulls. It takes time. And repetition.
Like Oscar Pistorius, Henri van Breda is the sole accused. I cannot comment on whether he is guilty or not - part of me hopes a child isn't capable of being so violent and wicked, and thankfully for me I am not the presiding judge in the case.
What astonishes me is that there are no cameras and tv in court. No live feed - it was said that with Oscar it wasn't his celebrity, but the public interest in the case. For nearly 2 years South Africa laboured over a photo of a bloody floor in the toilet cubicle where Reeva Steenkamp was shot. Yet no mobs accost van Breda outside in the streets. There aren't vicious fights on Twitter. Newspaper bring headlines of an Indian family who allegedly captured the State and fed some senior politicians and our President a substantial amount of curry.
Where is the outrage? Where are those who were so vocal about murder during Oscar's trial? Here are 3 family members axed to death. Nearly 4. Henri van Breda does not get trolled, he isn't escorted by bodyguards - what happened South Africa? Have you lost interest in murder? Are you fed up and as a result unconcerned? Does a celebrity deserve more punishment than a spoilt blue eyed accused without medals and Olympic records?
Where is your moral compass? And why flog the one but not the other?
Photo credit: IOL
