An Excerpt from WHITE HORSE III #OscarPistorius

From the Chapter:

In Court

“The way they act in court – they act like they own the court!” — Mikey Schultz speaking about the Pistorius family

I looked at Uncle Arnold surveying his kingdom, taking in the little people of the gallery. He wasn’t just glancing from one side of the gallery to the other, he was scanning. It reminded me faintly of a Terminator.

He had his back to the front of the courtroom, and for a long moment, he took in all of us. Slowly, calmly, he took in each face. It had a calm, calculated quality about it, but the feeling I got wasn’t evil or menace, more satisfaction. All told Oom Arnold felt like things had turned out basically as he’d hoped, was the impression I got.

If this sounds easy to say after the fact, it wasn’t. It was my observation at the time – to Marc, and via WhatsApp to Lisa. Something else that was bizarre was a white policeman barking at us just before the trial began. He told us to turn off our cell phones, he warned us not to take any photos.

I was a little shell-shocked. I asked Marc: “If our phones are off, does that mean we can’t tweet…No man, I think he means turn off the sound of your phones.”

Then, shortly before Masipa arrived to take her seat I asked Marc a few quick questions about Justin Divaris. Botha had mentioned him and I wondered whether Marc could fill in any of those blanks.

“Are Justin Divaris and Samantha Greyvenstein still together?”

Marc told me they had gotten married, had had twins, but that one of the twins had died.

“Are Justin and Oscar still friends?”

Marc replied that at first they [Oscar and Justin] had remained friends, but subsequently Justin had felt Oscar had misled him, and thus, were no longer friends.

“Who did Justin call after Oscar called Justin?” [At 3:55:02 on February 14, 2013]

Justin called Major-General Shadrack Sibiya, a policeman the former head of the Hawks in Gauteng.

I guess Justin just happened to have the head of the Hawks number on his phone, don’t most of us?

Sibiya, who has been found not guilty of fraud, and I think not guilty as well of gross dereliction of duty, and not guilty of gross misconduct, was Justin’s first port of call.

Sibiya then made a call to…