Pretoria - Oscar Pistorius may end up spending only 10 months in prison for the culpable homicide of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, a justice department spokesman said on Tuesday.
In the High Court in Pretoria on Tuesday, Judge Thokozile Masipa sentenced Pistorius to five years in prison for killing Steenkamp and three years, suspended for five years, for firing a pistol under a table at Tasha's restaurant in Johannesburg in January 2013.
The sentences would run concurrently.
“Five years in terms of [Section] 276 of the Criminal Procedure Act means the accused serves one-sixth of the sentence, which is 10 months,” spokesman Mthunzi Mhaga said on his Facebook wall referring to the sentence handed down to Pistorius in the High Court in Pretoria.
“And an offender or inmate can be considered for placement under correctional supervision which is processed by correctional services.”
Meanwhile, the head of the National Prosecuting Authority said on Tuesday he would discuss the five-year prison sentence handed down to Pistorius, and a possible appeal, with prosecutors.
"We will consult with the prosecution team and then take the matter forward," national director of public prosecutions Mxolisi Nxasana told Parliament's portfolio committee on justice.
Deputy director Silas Ramaite added that senior prosecuting staff were "agitated" about the outcome of the case.
"We will meet with the prosecution team, do a post mortem of the various sentences," he said.
"Senior people in the NPA are actually quite agitated, wrongly so I would say."
They were responding to a question from African Christian Democratic Party MP Steve Swart. - Sapa