Reeva Steenkamp killed

In August an under pressure SA Justice Minister Michael Masutha cancelled at the twelfth hour Pistorius’ planned release from custody on license. A review parole board has now looked at his application and the latest decision is that Pistorius should stay (semi) incarcerated pending another consideration by the original parole board that prematurely agreed he could get early release into house arrest.

To the relief of many in South Africa and the watching world, it seems highly unlikely that he will ever see home as he expected, before the Prosecution’s appeal against his acquittal of murder is heard at the Supreme Court of Appeal in Bloemfontein in a month’s time.

What most people want and expect is that this man is seen to face justice and that the SA court system properly justifies his right to early freedom – or otherwise. The South African law is the law and the worldwide public will have to accept the outcome after due process. There are those who are vitriolic defenders of Pistorius and take to the internet with constant criticism of the fact that he faces a justice review – a plague on their houses, eh? Their rants against the process are sickening when taken in the context of an innocent young lady whose life was terminated in a disgusting manner by one Oscar Pistorius.

There can be no doubt that the SA State messed-up in the original trial – they were convinced Pistorius had deliberately blasted Reeva to death in a fit of rage – they might have been right but undoubtedly they certainly couldn’t prove it in Court, so the high powered Defence trounced them on that issue. What the State ‘should’ have done was to focus on the fact that Pistorius intended to kill ‘somebody’.

Their Appeal is on a point of law as the South African justice system stipulates, so it is not on a dispute of evidence facts – their claim is that the trial Judge Masipa’s judgment was a misinterpretation the law – we will have to wait and see if the senior judges disagree, wont we?

[Oscar Pistorius’ expectation of a return to his normal rich privileged life is in serious doubt, but by no means unrealistic, is it? What is certain though is that Reeva Steenkamp’s life has been terminated by him]