Ten years after the Oscar Pistorius massacre: now the former champion wants to go home

Do you remember the Voight-Kampff machine? Exactly, the one that in Blade Runner, Ridley Scott’s masterpiece, serves to understand if what is in front of you is a human or a replicant. Breathing, heartbeats, eye movements. He recorded everything, analyzed, and delivered a seemingly certain verdict. However unappealable.

Unfortunately it’s science fiction, not science, and in South Africa they won’t be able to use it on Oscar Pistorius to understand if, exactly ten years after the murder of his model-girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, ​​the Blade Runner of athletics lies or tells the truth. If he is truly repentant, and he deserves to be transferred from prison to house arrest – as he requests – or if he plays better than Rutger Hauer in one of the most famous monologues in the history of cinema.

You will remember: Pistorius, the bi-amputated leg phenomenon as a child who ran on hyper-technological blade-shaped prostheses, planetary star, the first disabled athlete in history to compete in the Olympics together with the able-bodied, on Valentine’s Day 2013 he fired four pistol shots through the bathroom door of his home in South Africa.

On the other side is Reeva, one of the sexiest women on the planet. “I woke up in the middle of the night and thought a thief had locked himself in the bathroom,” she justifies herself. At the end of two very media trials that lasted six years, they don’t believe him. The first sentence of 2013, 5 years for manslaughter, in 2018 was transformed into voluntary homicide: 13 years and 5 months to be served in the Kgosi Mampuro penitentiary in Pretoria. “No one fires four shots without the will to kill,” the appeals court cut short. Whether Reeva was behind that door – dressed in a sleeveless top and gray shorts, not a slip – or a thief, in the end, it doesn’t matter: Oscar couldn’t have pulled the trigger by mistake anyway.

The statements
The former Olympian has always stated that he acted in a state of agitation, convinced that his girlfriend was next to him in bed. Last June 22, when he finally met Barry, the father of his ex-girlfriend who read him a letter from his wife June, Pistorius burst into tears, still declaring his innocence. On the tenth anniversary of their daughter’s death, the Steenkamps are planning a slightly macabre ceremony, Big Lebowski-style: they will mix some of his ashes with those of a family friend who died last year, and scatter them at sea. “He showed no remorse,” Mama June said. “Meeting him was just a waste of time,” Barry admitted. Not even they, in short, believe him. South African law provides that those who have served half their sentence can spend the other half on probation, but to obtain it Pistorius needs the favorable opinion of a committee, a psychologist and a social worker. And the South African public, not just the Steenkamps, is not on his side.

The photo from the cell
Recently the Daily Mirror published some photos of the ex Blade Runner’s cell in Kgosi Mampuro. A cot, a personal tub, a metal sink, the light filtering through a checkered window above the cushions, a few magazines. A «comfy» cell, as they described it. But always a cell. According to his lawyer Julian Knight, Oscar was a “model prisoner”. Polite, respectful, a touch melancholy. When he’s not in his cell, he drives a tractor around the prison farm which produces cauliflower and other vegetables which are then sold at the market to raise funds for needy children. Forget the very fast and pleasure-loving Pistorius, anxious and unstable, who trained in Friuli, in Gemona, supported Lazio, participated in Dancing under the Stars, but went around armed and frequented opaque companies. Today he is a 36-year-old who has lost weight, balding hair, smokes one cigarette after another, painfully passed from the blinding light of the limelight – 6 Paralympic golds, but also silver with the 400 x 100 relay at the World Championships for able-bodied in Daegu and the eighth place in the 400 of London 2012 – in the long half-light of a South African cell. For years his performances in the odor of technological doping have caused discussions, his businesses have knocked down walls and created opportunities. However, the four shots in 2013 were not those of a false start. They broke a life and ruined the happy ending to the perfect fairy tale of the child born without pèroni and became a track and field star. The question is: does Pistorius deserve a second chance?

The story
In an interview granted to Repubblica, his manager Peter Van Zyl said that Oscar continues to follow the sport, and after his release he wants to return to Italy. But not even he is able to say what really happened on that night ten years ago. After all, Blade Runner aficionados know that the 2017 sequel hasn’t resolved the film’s most tormenting doubt, that is whether Harrison Ford, Inspector Deckard, is human or a replicant too. “No one – one of the prison officers told the Mail – can tell whether a prisoner is acting or not until he is released from prison”. Not even the Voight-Kampff machine.