By NINA FUNNELL
It’s now 20 months since Oscar Pistorius picked up a gun and shot his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp dead. In those 20 months, literally thousands of articles have been written about the crime, with journalists and audiences ghoulishly devouring every new detail, twist or turn that has emerged.
Oscar Pistorius.
And now as reporters around the world analyse the judge’s sentence, we again find ourselves hungry for details of this case. But there are some who will never learn the outcome of the case no matter what.
You see, in that same 20-month window since Reeva Steenkamp was killed, an estimated 2361 women in South Africa (where Steenkamp lived) have been killed by their partners. That is about 27 women every week. Or almost 4 women a day.
Every day.
Including today.
Reeva Steenkamp was an advocate against gender-based violence.
We will likely never know these women’s names and we will never know their stories. Nor will we ever know whether the men who murdered these women were brought to justice or whether they evaded punishment. Such is the nature and extent of the problem.
And if we genuinely care about the life and ambitions of Reeva Steenkamp – who was herself an advocate against gender-based violence– we can’t continue to ignore this problem. (Nor can we continue to pretend that these sorts of crimes mainly occur in other countries and other communities).
In 2010, a group called People Opposing Women Abuse conducted a filmed social experiment in Johannesburg, mere kilometres away from where Steenkamp would eventually be killed.
In the experiment, an actor sets up a drum-kit in a townhouse complex and begins loudly playing. Hidden cameras then capture the neighbours’ responses.
Before long neighbours are sliding notes under the door, vocalising their complaints, and eventually a neighbour calls the police.
A few nights later, in the same complex, the actor then plays an audio recording (at a similar decibel level) of what sounds like a domestic assault in progress. Again, the cameras are there to capture the neighbours’ responses. Only this time no one knocks on the door and no one calls the police. No one does anything at all. Instead there is a deadly silence.
The YouTube clip documenting the experiment ends with the line “Every year 1400 women are killed by their partners. Don’t you think that’s something worth complaining about?”
What’s powerful about this clip is that because there is no actual perpetrator or victim (merely a simulated audio recording), the focus stays on the action and inaction of the bystanders.
And while this experiment was conducted in Johannesburg, we would be kidding ourselves to assume that the lessons learnt there don’t apply to our own backyard.
After all, one woman dies every week at the hands of her partner in this country. And the truth is that while responsibility must always lie with the perpetrator, at least some of these deaths could be prevented if more of us spoke up when we suspected violence occurring in our neighbours homes.
“One woman dies every week at the hands of her partner in this country.”
Of course there are all sorts of reasons why we, as a community, fail to speak up when we suspect domestic violence. Fear of retribution, fear of ‘getting it wrong’, fear or uncertainly of what to say or do, a belief that it’s ‘none of my business’, apathy, shock, and a lack of confidence in police services are all reasons that people give as to why they might not intervene.
Others, for whom domestic violence is normalised within their homes or communities, may consider it futile to intervene, especially if any previous attempts to do so have been unsuccessful.
But the more we talk about these issues, the more inroads we can make.
And as we mourn for Reeva Steenkamp, and all those others who have died at the hands of partners, it’s vital that we see the bigger picture. Because Reeva Steenkamp may have died alone. But her death does not stand in isolation.
Take a look through the images from Oscar’s trial:
Top Comments
Hi MM - I posted a comment here two hours ago and it hasn't appeared? Yet I see comments from five minutes ago already appearing under Mia's article....
Thank you for finding it and digging it out. I love MM but it is frustrating with the haphazard nature of the moderation of the comments :(
Ah, I will probably be shouted at for this. But seeing as the judge (years and years of actual legal experience and actually sat through the whole trial and all evidence, not just being a keyboard warrior with layman legal knowledge) didn't find him guilty of murdering her, that means we also shouldn't assume he meant to kill her. In which case this is not partner violence.
What bugs me is - in my humble opinion - the real issue (in this case) is being completely ignored. That is he thought it was okay to shoot to kill an intruder in his house. He has been found not guilty of murdering Reeva. But he was found guilty of (supposedly) unintentionally killing someone. I would argue he pretty intentionally tried to kill who he thought was behind that door. But because he thought it was just some intruder, he thought he was allowed to kill them. I know many people say intruders deserve what they get if that happens, they shouldn't have been there in the first place. But the law says you can't kill someone else in your house unless you are under direct threat. Which he wasn't at that time.
There is so much violence in South Africa. The murder rate in 2012 was over 16,000 people. In a country that's only just over twice our population (our murder rate is listed as 244 in 2012). The police are corrupt in many areas. In other areas, they are simply overwhelmed and under resourced. Ordinary citizens (if wealthy enough) rely on private security guards. If you're not wealthy, you are in even more danger. So many people have guns, legally and illegally. Also in 2012, there were 65,000 reported rapes. And in a country like South Africa where police don't respond, where women don't have the education and resources like they do in Australia, the under reporting of rape is assumed to be even higher than usual (rape is a highly under-reported crime in countries across the world). There is also much higher incidences of child and infant rape (disturbing and heartbreaking).
All these unseen and unheard victims - those are who I would like to see more attention given to. I would like more attention given to the culture of violence in South Africa. Why the South African government is not doing practically anything about it. Why they aren't condemning it and working on ways of reducing it. Why in some cases they condone it. Why are we outraged over one white blonde woman who got killed but not outraged over tens of thousands of less photogenic and usually dark skinned people?