By NINA FUNNELL
It’s now 20 months since Oscar Pistorius picked up a gun and shot his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp dead. In those 20 months, literally thousands of articles have been written about the crime, with journalists and audiences ghoulishly devouring every new detail, twist or turn that has emerged.
Oscar Pistorius.
And now as reporters around the world analyse the judge’s sentence, we again find ourselves hungry for details of this case. But there are some who will never learn the outcome of the case no matter what.
You see, in that same 20-month window since Reeva Steenkamp was killed, an estimated 2361 women in South Africa (where Steenkamp lived) have been killed by their partners. That is about 27 women every week. Or almost 4 women a day.
Every day.
Including today.
Reeva Steenkamp was an advocate against gender-based violence.
We will likely never know these women’s names and we will never know their stories. Nor will we ever know whether the men who murdered these women were brought to justice or whether they evaded punishment. Such is the nature and extent of the problem.
And if we genuinely care about the life and ambitions of Reeva Steenkamp – who was herself an advocate against gender-based violence– we can’t continue to ignore this problem. (Nor can we continue to pretend that these sorts of crimes mainly occur in other countries and other communities).