Cape Town - “Man. Superman. Gunman.” That’s the headline on the latest Time magazine cover. The words are emblazoned on a photograph of Oscar Pistorius, bare-chested and wearing his blades.
An article, “Oscar Pistorius and South Africa’s Culture of Violence”, details the killing of his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, by his hand.
It describes the high walls and electrified fences at Pistorius’s home: “For all its defences, it failed to keep violence at bay.
“By Pistorius’s account, his fear of an intruder, the fear that keeps the people of South Africa apart still, caused the man so many saw as a unifying figure to shoot his girlfriend dead.”
The article describes South Africa’s history before and after apartheid and suggests that little has changed for the poor, leading to high levels of crime.
“Steenkamp was the tragic victim of a racially splintered society in which fear and distrust are so pervasive that citizens shoot first and ask questions later.”
The article says that with Pistorius’s arrest, South Africa’s dreams collided with its reality.
The article comes amid a furore over remarks made by Women, Children and People with Disabilities Minister Lulu Xingwana.
Xingwana told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation: “Young Afrikaner men are brought up in the Calvinist religion believing that they own a woman, they own a child, they own everything and therefore they can take that life because they own it.”
She was commenting on the Pistorius case.
Cape Times