by Mandy Wiener
Aitken says he and 11 guests were eating dinner at his weekend home, after 8pm, when his butler came to inform him that there were people ‘crying’ in the river.
‘I, together with a guest, Mr Markus Schorn, ran to my boat, which was moored in the river, and began to search for the people who were calling. As it was very dark, it took a few minutes to locate the people. We found two men standing chest deep in the water. The one was calling frantically and the other, standing hugging himself, appeared to be in shock. They seemed to be unaware that the river bank was only a metre or two behind them, and that they could have walked out of the water.’
Aitken says he didn’t see any damage to Oscar’s face and his boat had sunk without a trace. They were about to take the men aboard his boat when another barge approached at speed. ‘The people on board called out to us to leave as the men in the river were “their people”. Mr Schorn and I concurred in our opinion that the people on the barge appeared to be very drunk. This was made more apparent by the actions of a young woman on the barge who leapt into the water from the bow of the moving barge, narrowly avoiding injury.’
Aitken is adamant that the crash happened hours after the sun had set. ‘In my mind it was round about nine o’clock at night. It was very dark and we had difficulty finding these guys in the dark.’ Schorn has also confirmed Aitken’s version of events.
Media reports in 2009 gave various times for the accident having taken place from 20:30 until 22:00, all well after sunset. The Daily Maverick quoted another individual, not part of Aitken’s dining group, as saying that he had an altercation with Oscar on the river that same evening, which occurred ‘long’ after sunset – and before the accident.
After Oscar’s testimony in court, a pleasure-boat operator at the Vaal made another revelation to us. He claims that he had a confrontation with the athlete after sunset on the night of the incident, that Oscar was drunk and that he showed him his gun.
The operator, who does not want to be named, says that around 30 people were having a party on the top deck of his boat, when Oscar and two friends pulled up wanting to buy drinks.
‘His boat was full of booze, bottles, bottles, all over the place. They were pissed as farts. They called us a bunch of Engelsmanne [Englishmen], we told him he was a Dutchman and should fuck off. He said, “Do you know who I am? My name is Oscar Pistorius. I’m the Blade Runner.” He lifted up his shirt and showed me his gun in his shorts. Then he put his shirt down, climbed into his boat and left. That was at about 7:30pm. The police came to me the next morning and asked if I want to lay a charge. I said no, there was no fight, he was just cheeky.’
We have not been able to confirm whether this incident took place, but Aitken, Schorn and the pleasure-boat operator all cast doubt on Oscar’s version that his boating accident had occurred at sunset.
In the same year as the boating incident, the National Prosecuting Authority was again called upon to consider whether or not to prosecute Oscar Pistorius in a court of law. The golden boy, with a squeaky clean reputation, shocked many when he was arrested following an apparent assault at a house party at his Silver Woods home. He spent a night in the holding cells at the Boschkop police station after being charged with grievous bodily harm to student Cassidy Taylor-Memmory. The charge was downgraded and eventually dropped but Oscar’s reputation was impacted by the publicity around the incident and the matter resulted in a messy civil dispute that dragged on for years.
Taylor-Memmory, a timid, young blogger from Pretoria, who runs a website called The Glam Green Girl, attended a party at Oscar’s house on 12 September 2009. Her friend Melissa Rom was dating the athlete at the time and Taylor-Memmory had only met him once before. She and two other friends arrived late as they had been at their part-time student jobs. She claims she and her friends sat in the garden enjoying the party until Oscar and his girlfriend began to fight.
‘This led to Oscar asking all of Melissa’s friends to leave, using vulgar language. I had left my handbag in the garden where we all had been sitting and needed to get back into his property to fetch it. As I approached his large outside doors, Oscar was furiously trying to close them. He started to punch the door and that is when one of the top door panels fell and hit my left leg. Six weeks prior to the party my plaster cast had just come off after having reconstructive surgery on my left ankle. After this happened I went to tell Oscar that he had hurt me to which he replied, “Well, go call your fucking lawyer”,’ recalls Taylor-Memmory.
‘After the incident at Oscar’s house I arrived home and was hysterically crying. Like any loving parents would do, my parents wanted to protect me and my mom and dad felt it was best to let the police deal with the matter and for them to decide what should be done. The police saw the cut on my leg and they thought it would be best to open a case of assault against Oscar,’ she recounts. Taylor-Memmory’s mother opened the case with the Boschkop police and investigating officer Hilton Botha was appointed to the case.
This was the first time the policeman met the athlete. Curiously, Taylor-Memmory’s lawyer Ladine Botha told the Mail & Guardian that records at the police station did not show that Oscar was either processed or booked in there and that the cell’s register book did not reflect his name. Hilton Botha also chose not to raise this prior arrest during Oscar’s bail application following Reeva’s death but was pushed into divulging the details by the enquiring magistrate.
At around 10pm on the Saturday night, the 22-year-old athlete was arrested on a charge of assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm. After being held in custody overnight, the charge was downgraded to assault. Oscar released a statement saying that he had asked Taylor-Memmory to leave the party and she reacted unhappily, kicking the door, which broke, injuring her. ‘I categorically deny that I in any way assaulted the woman,’ said Oscar. He also accused Taylor-Memmory of consuming alcohol and becoming abusive to other guests at the party. He claims he had asked her to leave because her ‘abusive behaviour’ was upsetting the guests. She was escorted out, he said, and he closed the door behind her.
Taylor-Memmory says Oscar’s behaviour on the night shocked her because she had never experienced any volatile behaviour on his part before. She also categorically denies that she was drunk, despite Oscar’s legal team suggesting photographs showed her downing shots of alcohol. ‘I was most certainly not drunk! The police who interviewed me after the incident never asked to test me for alcohol,’ she says.
After being released from custody, Oscar laid a R2.2-million civil claim against Taylor-Memmory for damages. He alleged he lost public appearance fees and he felt humiliated about being arrested. In return, she laid a counter claim against him demanding a public apology.
Taylor-Memmory claims that while Oscar dropped his case against her, she persisted with her claim for a further four years until it was settled in December 2013, just months before Oscar went on trial for murder.
Oscar’s lawyer dealing with this incident, Gary Pritchard from Hogan Lovells, suggests Taylor-Memmory’s version is a ‘blatant untruth’. He says both claims were simultaneously withdrawn by the parties in December 2013 when the matter was settled.
The matter was due to go to trial in February 2013, just a week after Oscar shot Reeva. Pritchard says neither side was ready to proceed and the matter was removed from the roll so that settlement discussions could continue. ‘The timeline and December 2013 settlement had absolutely nothing to do with the Reeva incident and would have had exactly the same result whether the incident on 14 February 2013 had happened or not,’ insists Pritchard.
‘All I wanted was an apology from Oscar and the settlement of the legal fees. I have never made a public appearance or even approached the media about it. It has ultimately been resolved through a settlement in December 2013,’ the blogger recounted in an exclusive interview with us. ‘Some days I wish I had never gone through with it all, but I stood up for myself, which was extremely difficult especially when you feel like the whole coun
try is against you. But I’m proud of the fact that I never backed down and I learnt that you should always stand up for what is right, even when you stand alone. Oscar settled the legal fees but I did not receive an apology. I agreed to it because I was so tired of it weighing me down, I wanted to put this incident behind me.’
Taylor-Memmory has never spoken about the incident or the lawsuits that followed the incident and says she has been ‘bombarded’ and ‘hounded’ by media and journalists over the years. She says she remains traumatised by the experience and still finds it difficult to speak about it. ‘I was utterly harassed. I was harassed by the media as well as the public. I received hate mail on a daily basis. People who didn’t know me from a bar of soap were calling me the most horrific names. It became so difficult at a stage that I needed a bodyguard when I went out in public due to all the hate rants.’
While the National Prosecuting Authority took the decision not to proceed with the case against the athlete, some damage had been done to his public profile. After the global acclaim that followed his victory at the Court of Arbitration for Sport, and in the wake of his near-fatal boat accident and the controversy that accompanied it, Oscar could not afford to be in the media spotlight for the wrong reasons again.
On the track, Oscar set about trying to achieve the ultimate goal of competing in the 2012 Olympic Games in London. Having recovered from the injuries he sustained in the boating accident, he dropped 17 kilograms and was far leaner. The accident altered his lifestyle and strengthened his focus.
In January 2011, a trimmer Oscar won three International Paralympic Committee (IPC) Athletics World titles in New Zealand but was beaten for the first time in seven years in the 100 metres by American Jerome Singleton. Oscar subsequently won the T44 400 metres in 47.28 seconds and the 100 metres in 11.04 seconds at the BT Paralympic World Cup in May to reassert himself as the fastest Paralympic sprinter in the world.
He continued to compete in a number of able-bodied races in 2011 and posted three times under 46 seconds, but it was in Lignano, Italy, on 19 July that Oscar set a personal best of 45.07 seconds in the 400 metres, attaining the World Championships and Olympic Games ‘A’ standard qualification mark. On 8 August 2011 it was announced that Oscar had been included in the South African team for the IAAF World Championships in Daegu and was selected for the 400 metres and 4x400 metres relay squad. In the heats of the 400 metres, Oscar finished third in a time of 45.39 seconds, his second fastest time ever, to qualify for the semi-final.
In the heats of the 4x400 metres relay, Oscar ran the opening leg as the South African team made it to the finals with a national record time of 2 minutes 59.21 seconds. Controversially, Oscar was not selected for the team for the final but was nevertheless awarded a historic silver medal, having run in the heats, and so he became the first Paralympic athlete to win a World Championship medal.
His chances of qualifying for London were fast becoming a reality. But pressure from the media, particularly the UK press, was immense. So much so, that in September 2011, Oscar stormed out of a BBC interview following what he believed was an ‘insulting’ question.
The BBC interviewer, Rob Bonnet, asked: ‘Some people regard you, no doubt, as an inspiration to Paralympic athletes, no question about that. But it might also be said that you’re an inconvenient embarrassment to the South African authorities and the IAAF because, effectively, you’re taking them into uncharted ethical waters here. What’s your reaction to that?’ Pistorius replied: ‘I think that’s an insult to me and I think this interview is over.’ Bonnet insisted that his question had not been intended as an ‘insult’.
In order to qualify for the Olympic Games, Oscar was required to race the Olympic qualification time of 45.30 seconds between January and June 2012. He achieved this at the Provincial Championships for Gauteng North in South Africa on 17 March, setting a time of 45.20 seconds. But that was not enough to book him a ticket to London. According to the South African Olympic body SASCOC’s own rules, he was required to run at least 45.30 seconds twice in international competitions in order to qualify and needed to break that time at the African Athletics Championships in Benin in June. He missed the mark, hitting a time of 45.52 seconds.
‘I am obviously disappointed that my time was just outside of the Olympic qualification time by two-tenths of a second,’ Oscar said in a statement. ‘I had felt very strong coming into this competition as my fitness and speed has been continually improving.’
Then, in a remarkable about-turn, the country’s officials changed their decision just weeks before the games to allow him to compete. He was selected to compete for Team South Africa at the London 2012 Olympic Games in the individual 400 metres event plus the 4x400 metres relay.
Oscar was thrown the lifeline when SASCOC added 13 names to a provisional team in July 2012. He responded by tweeting:
Today is really one of the happiest days of my life. Will be in London for both the Olympic and Paralympic Games!
Athletics South Africa board member and former sprinter Geraldine Pillay contentiously spoke out about Oscar’s selection on investigative television show Carte Blanche after his arrest. ‘There were things that we thought – let’s just forget about that and move on because he was Oscar Pistorius. We were so obsessed with him, just winning medals; just being on every cover of every newspaper and magazines that we totally missed the plot.’ SASCOC responded furiously and demanded that action be taken against Pillay.
‘Oscar shouldn’t have gone to the Olympic Games. Oscar wasn’t going to be a contender. The times … he didn’t qualify …’ veteran broadcaster Graeme Joffe told Carte Blanche about the selection. ‘The selection criteria [are] steadfast, according to SASCOC, but they bend the rules to suit themselves.’
But Oscar Pistorius was South Africa’s pride, the country’s ‘good thing’ and sporting authorities did not want to miss out on an opportunity to parade him on the world stage and make history. It had the potential to be a marketing coup. And so it was that, despite Oscar not qualifying for the individual 400 metres race, the decision was taken that he would represent South Africa because he was going to be at the games in any event as part of the 4x400 metres relay team.
Oscar competed in a 400 metres heat of the Olympic Games and finished in second position in a time of 45.44 seconds. He qualified for the semi-final, but finished last in that race. Memorably, Grenada’s Kirani James, who won the semi-final, rushed over to Oscar after the race, embraced him and asked to swap bib numbers with the Blade Runner, an indication of the high esteem in which he was held by fellow competitors. ‘My hat’s off to him, just coming out here and competing,’ James told reporters. ‘I just see him as another athlete, another competitor. What’s more important is I see him as another person. He’s someone I admire and respect.’
Having been knocked out of the individual category, Oscar still had the opportunity to compete in the 4x400 metres relay. The heat was eventful – the Kenyan team was disqualified from the competition after a collision with South Africa’s Ofentse Mogawane, who was running the second leg of the race. As a result, Oscar, who was waiting in the third position, never received the baton and did not run. It was a massive anticlimax after the build-up to the event. After the South African management appealed, the squad was reinstated in the competition and given lane one out of nine lanes in the Olympic final.
The following evening Oscar and his teammates Shaun de Jager, LJ van Zyl and Willie de Beer competed with Oscar on the anchor leg. They finished in eighth place in the Olympic final.
Having rewritten the history books, Oscar was chosen to bear his country’s flag at the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games. Just days later, he again carried the flag in London as he led the South African Paralympic team into the same stadium.
At the Paralympics, his focus shifted to winning medals. He opened strongly and set a new world record in the t43 200 metres race. In nine years of competition, Oscar had never lost over the distance. And then,
all of a sudden, reality did not go according to the script.
In the final of the 200 metres, Oscar – astonishingly – did not win and finished second behind Brazilian athlete Alan Oliveira. The Brazilian came from behind with just 30 metres to go to chase down the favourite, sending gasps through the 80 000-strong crowd. A media storm erupted around Oscar as, just minutes after the race, he displayed a lack of dignity and humility by publicly questioning the legality of Oliveira’s blade. The irony was monumental – here was an icon who had spent years fighting to ensure that his ability was not undermined by the apparent benefits gained from his prosthetic legs and now he was accusing a competitor of exactly the same thing.
‘Not taking away from Alan’s performance, he’s a great athlete, but these guys are a lot taller and you can’t compete [with the] stride length. You saw how far he came back. We aren’t racing a fair race. I gave it my best,’ Oscar said.
He insisted that he had been raising the issue with the IPC for several weeks, complaining that competitors were using blades that elevated their knees to four inches above their natural height and lengthened their strides and were running ‘ridiculous’ times as a result. ‘I run just over 10 metres per second, I don’t know how you can come back, watching the replay, from eight metres behind on the 100 to win. It’s absolutely ridiculous.’ However, Oscar’s own world record set in the heats was faster than Oliveira’s winning time in the final.
Oscar, who by the IAAF requirements could not alter the length of his blades if he wanted to continue to compete in able-bodied competition, felt that he was not competing on a level playing field. ‘I’ve never seen a guy come back from eight metres (behind) on the 100 metres mark to overtake me on the finish line,’ said the South African to The Telegraph. ‘We’ve known [about the longer blades] for about a month. I’ve brought it up with the IPC but nothing’s been done about it. I believe in the fairness of sport, I believe in running on the right length.’
