Four days before Oscar Pistorius shot her in the elbow, hip and head
through the bathroom door at his home in Pretoria, Reeva Steenkamp
tweeted a message about violence against women in South Africa. "I woke
up in a happy safe home this morning," the 29-year-old wrote. "Not
everyone did. Speak out against the rape of individuals." As Valentine's
Day broke with the news that the 26-year-old who became a global icon
in 2012 by running in both the Paralympics and the Olympics had killed
his girlfriend, Steenkamp's words--repeated around the world--only added
to the sense of improbability. I checked Steenkamp's words on Twitter.
Then I found myself scrolling back through her life in 140-character
snippets.
Four days before Oscar Pistorius shot her in the elbow, hip and head
through the bathroom door at his home in Pretoria, Reeva Steenkamp
tweeted a message about violence against women in South Africa. "I woke
up in a happy safe home this morning," the 29-year-old wrote. "Not
everyone did. Speak out against the rape of individuals." As Valentine's
Day broke with the news that the 26-year-old who became a global icon
in 2012 by running in both the Paralympics and the Olympics had killed
his girlfriend, Steenkamp's words--repeated around the world--only added
to the sense of improbability. I checked Steenkamp's words on Twitter.
Then I found myself scrolling back through her life in 140-character
snippets.
Steenkamp--who described herself on Twitter as "SA
Model, Cover Girl, Tropika Island of Treasure Celeb Contestant, Law
Graduate, Child of God"--tweeted a lot. She loved her friends! She loved
red-carpet events and award ceremonies and sponsored parties! She loved
her modeling agency and new skin creams and the people who fixed her
hair!
Above all, Steenkamp really loved her favorite people. And
from New Year's Day to Jan. 7 she posted regularly from a vacation she
was taking in and around the city where she was born, Cape Town, with a
few friends and the man she called "my boo," who on Twitter goes by
@OscarPistorius. On Jan. 3 she posted a picture of the sunrise taken
from the balcony of the $680-a-night presidential suite at a spa hotel
in Hermanus, 90 minutes southeast of Cape Town. Later that day she
tweeted, "The chauffeurs in Cape Town hey. Nice!" and attached a picture
of Pistorius driving an Aston Martin. On Jan. 4, name-checking
Pistorius, her best friend, a private banker and a luxury-car importer
who was sourcing a McLaren sports car for Pistorius, she tweeted about a
lunch the five were sharing at Cape Town's newest hip hangout. "Shimmy
Beach Club!" she wrote. "Tooooo much food!!! Amazing holiday :)"
Steenkamp
had been dating Pistorius only since November. However brief their life
together, her tweets reveal the glamorous life of the white South
African elite. In many ways, the end of apartheid 19 years ago, and the
crippling sanctions that died with it, made their lives better. Incomes
rose, guilt fell. But beyond the painful irony of a woman killed by
gunshots having tweeted about violence against women, there was also the
killer's defense: that 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. And then there was the
murder scene itself, a locked bathroom within a fortified mansion in an
elite enclave surrounded by barbed wire, in a country where more than
half the population earns less than $65 a month and killings are now so
common that they reach the highest echelons of society and celebrity.
Why is gun violence so prevalent in South Africa? Why is violence
against women so common?
Was this homicide?
Why did Oscar kill Reeva?
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