Reeva Steenkamp’s mother: “I’ve forgiven Oscar for killing my daughter”
The mother of murdered model Reeva Steenkamp says she is “finished” with Olympian and convicted killer Oscar Pistorius once and for all.
“I am not interested in Oscar Pistorius, I am finished with that,” June Steenkamp, 71, said, after Pistorius exhausted all legal attempts to reduce his 15-year sentence for shooting dead his girlfriend Reeva on Valentine's Day five years ago.
“It's up to the justice system now – I have no interest whatsoever in him. He is not important to me anymore. It has been five years and I have had enough now,” she told the South African media.
June and Barry Steenkamp, the parents of slain model Reeva.
Steenkamp added that she and Barry are not “vengeful or vindictive” people.
“I've forgiven Oscar for killing my daughter,” she said. “I'm a Christian. God expects me to forgive. But He doesn't expect the person not to be punished. He's got to be punished. A lot of people don't understand that but it's true. For me it's true.”
Steenkamp confirmed she hadn't personally told Pistorius that he had been forgiven.
“I haven't had contact with him. What must I say to man who has killed my daughter?” she said.
“There's nothing to say. If he murdered your daughter would you want to talk to him?
“Would you want to personally talk to him? I don't think so. Talking to him is not possible. It's not for me. I'm over it now.”
Steenkamp also addressed those who blame her for the Olympian's fall from the grace.
“I don't take it personally anymore. It doesn't hurt anymore,” she said.
“One of my friends once said, June you were nothing and nobody until your daughter died. I was horrified. But I never reacted.
“I just take that sort of person out of my life. She's now an ex friend. If I didn't walk away I'd be in an institution by now.”
Pistorius' last ditch legal appeal failed in the highest South African court this week after the Constitutional Court ruled it did not have the jurisdiction to grant him leave to appeal.
Steenkamp says she has never recovered from her daughter's death.
“It's frozen in my mind. The pain of losing her is in my thoughts every day. It will always be there for me,” she said.
“In certain ways her death destroyed part of my life. It's the worst thing that could have ever happened to me.
“When Reeva was about four or five, one of my friends said to me, June don't love things too much, they get taken away from you. That's something I'll never forget.
“She could see how much I loved my child. That stuck in my mind. And Reeva's death cemented it.'
The grief over losing a child, she noted, had no timeline.
“One would imagine that after five years it would be easier. But it's actually not. Some days are still very hard,” she said. “She was such an inspiring person and devoted to Barry and I. We miss her. She was a shiny light in our lives. She loved us and doted on us. So it's difficult living without that person. I think I will go to my death with this with me.”
She says the only thing that keeps her going is the Reeva Steenkamp Foundation, the non-profit organisation she launched in 2015 to educate children about violence, bullying and abuse.
“I thought straight away of a foundation to protect women, for awareness for them to realise what they were involved in,” says Steenkamp.
“Violence against women is escalating daily now. Reeva was already working against abuse, now I'm taking the baton and going forward with it.”
“I'm sure [Reeva] knows what I'm doing,” she added.