Until that fateful Valentine's Day last year, the public perception of Oscar Pistorius was that of a good-looking athlete at the top of his game living the kind of celebrity lifestyle every young boy dreams of. Subsequent events have shattered that myth in a very public manner and the fact is a beautiful young woman's life ended thanks to Pistorius.
What the death of Reeva Steenkamp proved was that violence against women in South Africa (and Africa as a whole) is not restricted to the poor and unemployed as the media would have us believe.
Reeva's death also highlighted Oscar Pistorius' deep set emotional turmoil - something his fans had never been privy to before.
A recent book entitled 'Oscar: An Accident Waiting To Happen' was recently launched at the newly renovated Exclusive Books in Rosebank. The co-author of this book is Patricia Taylor whose daughter, Samantha, dated Pistorius only months before he met Reeva Steenkamp. Her story is a chilling diary of events told from the point of view of a mother frightened for the safety of her daughter.
She paints Pistorius as a deeply troubled soul, 'Looking at the way he approached his relationships with women it was almost as though he had read some cheesy "how to date a girl book" .... but there was something very disconnected in it all, almost as though he was imitating someone in love ..... and as soon as his lover made any demands or showed signs of disinterest, he either backed away or got hyper-obsessive'.
The author's take on Pistorius' relationship with Samantha Taylor seems to be a carbon copy of the relationship portrayed by Reeva Steenkamp's friends and family. It began as a 'fun and loving union' but later descended into 'an almost outer-wordly darkness'.
As the world awaits the outcome of the Oscar Pistorius sentencing, Patricia Taylor must be counting her blessings. Her story is a fascinating one riddled with fear for the well-being of her daughter - 'I think about Oscar and what he put my family through. How his life went so haywire that he went as far as shooting and killing someone. And how he hurt my precious daughter and broke her trust in so many ways.'
Oscar : An Accident Waiting To Happen by Melinda Ferguson & Patricia Taylor is available at Exclusive Books countrywide.
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