Oscar Pistorius and Legal Theatre | Jerm Warfare

**Jerm** (0:30)
My name is Jerm, this is Jerm Warfare, The Battle of Ideas. I invited you back to chat about the Oscar Pistorius trial that happened a number of years ago. Now, I know you weren't personally involved in that, so this is not about...

**David Klatzow** (0:47)
No, I was personally involved in it.

**Jerm** (0:50)
Oh, but you weren't involved in the court, is what I mean.

**David Klatzow** (0:52)
Not in the court, no. Well, I was employed by an American TV corporation to keep a watching brief and to report on the trial.

**Jerm** (1:02)
Okay, so the obvious question is, why are we talking about it? Why is it relevant?

**David Klatzow** (1:10)
I'm not sure why it's relevant now, but it's relevant from the point of view of... It's a very interesting chapter in the history of South Africa. Because Oscar Pistorius went from hero to zero rather rapidly.
And in his early days, it was part of a chapter in my book that I wrote.
And Judge Krichler advised me to take it out, which I did. You don't not follow the advice of Judge Krichler ever. So he said to me, I wouldn't put it in if I were you, so I didn't put it in because the trial was still ongoing. But I sat through the entire trial, and saw it on video camera, and I watched Kherinel and Barry Roo. Barry I know very well. And I watched them, and the trial itself has had some unfortunate, unfortunate consequences subsequently.
The cross-examination of Oscar Pistorius by Barry drew a lot of criticism at the trial from legal practitioners in the country and outside the country. And Barry was also fairly robust in his cross-examination. But the point about that was that there were things, the real question about it was, was he guilty of murder or was he not guilty of murder? Let me tell you something quite interesting. I live in England in a little town called Wolpert, which is about a one-horse town, as far, as close to a one-horse town as you can get, where the horse still alive. And I was asked to give a talk in Wolpert. And what did they want me to talk about? Oscar Pistorius. Right in the middle of the British felt.

**Jerm** (3:10)
For those who don't know, let's just quickly go through what happened.

**David Klatzow** (3:14)
All right. Well, Oscar Pistorius, as you know, was born with grossly deformed limbs, resulting in bilateral amputations. And he grew up without limbs. And somebody had the bright idea of fitting him with artificial blades upon which he learned to walk. And he learned to run on those. And he was a fit young man. And he obviously became fitter and fitter and better and better until he became an international star.
To the extent where he was competing with able-bodied people, he was way ahead of the non-able-bodied fraternity. And he then competed with able-bodied folk in the Olympic Games. And is unique in that respect in many ways, in that he managed to compete very successfully winning bronze.

**Jerm** (4:13)
And that's also an important point here, because he was so good on his blades, he was known as the Blade Runner, that it became a hot debate in sports science as to whether or not he was actually gaining an advantage over able-bodied runners.

**David Klatzow** (4:32)
That's right. There was a lot of research done on whether he was actually getting an advantage over able-bodied runners. And I'm not sure what the outcome of that was. But he did extraordinarily well, and he had the world at his fingertips. People were lining up to have him as the mascot, as it were, and he had advertising contracts lined up, and it was a remarkable world. And he had every woman in the world, as long as they were pretty and blonde, who was chasing after him. And they were there. Then what happened was that he'd been going out with, strangely enough, I have a different context with it, he'd been going out with a young woman whose mother I taught at school. I was a teacher at one stage, and I taught this woman at school, and her daughter was the girlfriend before Reeva Steenkamp. And I took statements from that daughter at the time for my book. And he was really a little bit out of hand. He used to abuse alcohol a bit, and he got himself totally drunk one night and lit a fire in their flat on the floor and then poured alcohol onto it, and then slipped on that.
And this young woman was so nervous for her life that she went and hid his pistol away. Anyway, he had a second interest apart from running, namely, he was quite interested in firearms, not from a firearm point of view, but from a macho point of view. He went for the automatic weapons and he had a nine-null parabellum, and he had applications in for bigger and better and stronger and faster and heavier weapons, which were all in process. And he would have got them because of his celebrity status. Anyway, the long and the short of it was that he broke up with the woman that I know. And he took up with Reeva Steenkamp shortly before this unfortunate incident occurred. And I'm not sure that Oscar was, there were certainly rumors and allegations of infidelity. And I think that Reeva might have been a little unhappy with this infidelity that was being alleged and he was certainly still talking to previous girlfriends at the time of the terrible incident. And I think she came upon him when he was talking to one of these erstwhile liaisons.