Oscar Pistorius will be released from prison on parole on Friday, after serving half of his 13-year sentence for murdering his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp.
Details of the time and place of his release are being kept secret because of security concerns, according to the Department of Correctional Services, which says he is being treated exactly like all other inmates.
“An elevated public profile linked to Pistorius does not make him different from other inmates nor warrant inconsistent treatment,” it said in a statement. “South Africa opted for a victim-centred criminal justice system. As a result, inmates and parolees are never paraded.”
The former Paralympic and Olympic athlete will be subject to correctional supervision until his sentence ends in 2029. He is expected to live at a relative’s home in Waterkloof, an upmarket suburb of South Africa’s capital Pretoria, and to attend programmes on gender-based violence and anger management. He will not be allowed to drink alcohol, and will have to get permission to travel or take up employment, which makes it unlikely he will return to the running track soon.
The Atteridgeville correctional centre, where Pistorius spent most of his time behind bars, is usually reserved for non-violent offenders, but was thought better-equipped to handle an inmate with disabilities. He had his own cell with an en suite bathroom, and access to a vegetable patch to grow food. Media reports suggest he has lost his fitness while in prison, and grown a beard.
Pistorius’s early release has highlighted the broader issue of gender-based violence in South Africa – an issue that was close to Steenkamp’s heart, according to her friends and family. Bulelwa Adonis, a spokesperson for the advocacy group Women for Change, said releasing Pistorius early sent “the wrong message” to potential offenders.
She added that the enormous international attention generated by the Pistorius’s trial had done nothing to improve the situation for women in South Africa, who are subject to some of the highest rates of gender-based violence in the world. “If anything, we’ve only seen statistics rise since 2013. Things have only got worse,” she said. “What we perceive is that our government, our SA leaders, haven’t taken gender-based violence seriously.”
Between April 2022 and March 2023, 43,037 sexual offences were reported to South African police. The number of crimes that go unreported is thought to be far higher.
Pistorius was one of the most recognisable names in world sport when he fatally shot Steenkamp, a paralegal and model, four times through the bathroom door of their Pretoria home in the early hours of Valentine’s Day in 2013. He was a six-time gold medal winner in the Paralympics, and qualified for the Olympic Games while wearing prosthetic blades – one of only 10 athletes ever to have competed in both competitions. He was celebrated nationally and internationally, winning multiple awards, and received several high-profile endorsement deals (his campaign with Nike ran with the unfortunate slogan: “I am the bullet in the chamber”).
Pistorius claimed he mistook Steenkamp for an intruder, but after a lengthy trial, which attracted enormous international media attention, a judge disagreed. He was initially convicted of culpable homicide; on appeal, this was overturned and he was instead found guilty of murder, a more serious charge with a longer sentence.
The decision to grant him parole was made last November. June Steenkamp, Reeva’s mother, did not attend the hearing. “I simply cannot muster the energy to face him again at this stage,” she said in a statement. Although she said she had forgiven Pistorius – “I knew almost instantly that I would not be able to survive if I had to cling to my anger” – she was “not convinced” he had shown enough remorse to be released.
In 2022, Pistorius met Reeva’s father, Barry Steenkamp, as part of the Victim Offender Dialogue – a programme that allows the victims of violent crime, or their families, to meet the perpetrators if they want to. Barry Steenkamp, who has since died, said he cut the meeting short because he did not get the answers he wanted.
