More than a year ago, Henke Pistorius stood right behind his son and reached out to put his hand on the athlete’s shoulder.
It was Oscar Pistorius’s darkest hour – fighting for bail mere days after firing the shots that killed his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp.
It was during this bail application that the world caught a glimpse of Oscar’s strained relationship with his father. At the time, the sobbing athlete barely acknowledged him.
Thirty-two days into his murder trial, the father’s absence has been obvious. Henke has not taken the time to walk into courtroom GD at the High Court in Pretoria to take a seat with the Pistorius clan.
Barry Steenkamp is unable to attend the trial . The trauma of losing his daughter dealt his health a blow and he follows the trial on TV while he recovers at home.
The rest of the Pistorius family have stuck together – Oscar’s brother and sister, Carl and Aimee, his uncle, Arnold, and his wife, Lois, and other family members have taken up positions right behind Pistorius as he sits in the dock.
Henke’s failure to attend the trial is not strange considering the evidence given by a psychiatrist and Oscar himself. Henke has been an absent dad for most of Oscar’s life.
From Oscar’s own testimony and that of a psychiatrist, Dr Merryll Vorster, it is clear that, after his parents’ divorce and his mother’s death when he was a teenager, Oscar never enjoyed a strong bond with his father.
Vorster told the court that a serious disagreement between Oscar and Henke when the athlete was 21 led to their becoming even more estranged.
“His father did not always contribute to their support, and from his description and that of his siblings, his father was irresponsible and mostly [an] absent parent,” said Vorster.
The troubled relationship will almost certainly come up for discussion during Oscar’s psychiatric evaluation.
The court ordered this week that he undergo psychiatric observation and a panel of psychiatrists and psychologists will no doubt delve into the relationship.
One of the charges Oscar faces is directly linked to his father. He has been charged with the unlawful possession of .38 calibre ammunition, which he claims he kept in a safe at his home for his father.
Oscar tried to argue in court that he was under the impression that he could keep the ammunition because he did not have a gun that could fire ammunition of that calibre. Prosecutor Gerrie Nel then dropped a bit of a bombshell for those who did not know about the complicated relationship. Henke had refused to sign a statement, presented to him by police investigators, confirming that the ammunition belonged to him.
If he had failed his son in the past, it would be difficult to understand why he would now implicate himself for his son’s sake.
It has been extremely difficult to establish where Henke has been for the past year. It is known that he was on the receiving end of a bad debt judgment involving R50000 last year. And it appears that he has parted ways with most of the companies in which he was involved with his brothers, successful businessmen.
At one stage, Henke lived in a hotel in Port Alfred in the Eastern Cape. A receptionist at the hotel said this week that she had not seen him “in forever”.
He is understood to be living in Gauteng now.
Henke has declined numerous requests for interviews. He turned this newspaper down in February because “the media have proved to be not reliable”.
Last year, Henke’s comments in a British newspaper to the effect that the ANC government was partly to blame for his son’s predicament because it failed to protect whites against violent crime led to a swift statement from the Pistorius family, distancing them from the statement .
Henke, in a previous e-mail response to this newspaper, said he “might” attend the trial at its conclusion.
Oscar and his family, through their spokesman, declined to answer any questions about their relationship with Henke this week.
The question that remains is whether Henke, 61, will be in court when Judge Thokozile Masipa eventually delivers her verdict.
Source – Timelive