Pretoria – The six year jailterm handed to disgraced former paralympian Oscar Pistorius on Wednesday was a slap on the wrist, the African National Congress Women’s League said.
“We are wearing black on our heads, mourning all the women who died at the hands of their partners. It’s like we anticipated that we will be hurt further. We are embarrassed and (feel) very insulted at the same time,” the ANCWL Gauteng spokesperson Jacqui Mofokeng told reporters at court shortly after Pistorius was sentenced.
Read: 6 years for #OscarPistorius: say what?
“At least a ten year sentence would have meant something to us. The judge was speaking of a 15 year sentence. I don’t get it. The judge has now only added one year to the five years she sentenced him for culpable homicide.”
She said the woman’s formation was deeply disappointed by the judge’s ruling.
“It does send the wrong message out there. It is very bad. It’s an insult to women, that is what I can say,” said Mofokeng.
She said it wad unfair for Pistorius to hide behind his disability when he had committed such a grave offence.
“Are we saying if people with disability do wrong, we should judge them according to disability? It’s not supposed to be like that. Remember this is the man who said he would run (compete) with able bodied people? He was supposed to get a fair sentence like an able bodied person,” Mofokeng lamented.
Pistorius was sentenced to six years behind bars, by High Court Judge Thokozile Masipa, for the murder of Steenkamp three years ago.
Masipa said the mitigating factors outweighed the aggravating factors. She said she had taken into account the fact that Pistorius had already spent a year behind bars and was a first time offender who was unlikely to re-offend.
These factors justified her deviation from the minimum prescribed sentence of fifteen years for murder.
In December last year the supreme court of appeal in Bloemfontein overturned his conviction of culpable homicide and converted it to murder.
Steenkamp’s parents Barry and June were both at the packed courtroom on Wednesday morning, listening intently as Judge Masipa passed sentence.
African News Agency