CONTROVERSIAL ‘BLADE RUNNER’ PISTORIUS CLEARED OF MURDER CHARGES! CASE ADJOURNED WITHOUT A FINAL VERDICT! IS THERE A RACIST ANGLE?
11-9-2014 6.38pm IST
Medhaj News: Pistorius, now 27 years old, had kept 51 million South Africans and fans worldwide in suspense. He excelled as an athlete: won his gold in the 2004 Paralympics when he was just 17 years old — one of eight Paralympic medals he eventually won.
Steenkamp, his model girlfriend who was also a law graduate, was well-known in South Africa and was twice named one of FHM magazine's 100 Sexiest Women in the World. She also did TV commercials.
South African novelist Margie Orford wrote this month that “the very crux of Pistorius' defense inserts a third body into an all too familiar narrative of domestic violence ... It is the threatening body, nameless and faceless, of an armed and dangerous black intruder."
Orford’s angle is new—the world has largely ignored the `black intruder’ line taken by Pistorius’ defense. This becomes relevant as a new wave of anti-black racism hits the world following events in Ferguson and several other US cities.
But the South African judge who cleared Pistorius’ of all murder charges is a black woman. As part of South Africa’s post-Apartheid elite, accused by poorer blacks of emerging as a new ruling class, did the `black intruder’ preyed on her sub-conscious?
The verdict is most probably moving towards a `culpable homicide not amounting to murder’ conviction; in this OJ Simpson type trial, the general public is divided on his guilt. And the racist angle hangs in the air, waiting for attention!