'He is a murderer. He should remain in jail'

“I told Oscar directly that he had shot my daughter deliberately and he denied it. He stuck to his story that he thought it was an intruder. After all these years, we are still waiting for him to admit he did it in anger. That is all we wanted.

“If he told me the truth, he would have been a free man by now and I would have let the law take its course over his parole. But I was wasting my time. He is a murderer. He should remain in jail.”

Barry Steenkamp, father of Reeva, who was killed by Oscar Pistorius in 2013, was quoted by the UK’s Daily Mail. He was describing an encounter with Pistorius ahead of a decision by the South African Parole Board on whether to release him on parole, for which he is now eligible.

Steenkamp’s words struck a chord. My father, Robin McGregor, was murdered in 2008. Cecil Thomas, convicted of the murder, also comes up for parole this year. I too visited him in the hope he would give me the true story of what happened in my father’s final hour. I too came away empty-handed.

While Pistorius has been convicted of murder, it is not specifically of Reeva Steenkamp. In his initial trial, in which he was found guilty of the lesser crime of culpable homicide, the judge accepted his version of events — that he had not known it was Reeva behind the locked toilet door when he fired four shots through it.

This had to be accepted as fact by the Supreme Court of Appeal which later upgraded the verdict to murder on the grounds that the Black Talent ammunition he used mushrooms on striking a soft, moist target such as human flesh, causing devastating wounds. He must have foreseen that by firing four such shots into the small toilet cubicle he would have killed whoever was in it.  

I understand the Steenkamps’ craving to hear the true circumstances of their daughter’s death. I was desperate to learn the truth about my father’s. If I had known how he had reacted when ambushed in his home by Thomas, it would have given him a voice, given him some agency.

Knowing my father, I could have imagined his response, perhaps heroic or at least brave. He would not have been a pathetic, voiceless victim. It would have been a kind of goodbye.  

I still don’t know why Thomas wouldn’t tell me the truth. I can only guess. Was he afraid of retribution from the 28s gang whom he said were the culprits, though I stressed it was only his actions I was interested in? Or, and this is the generous interpretation: he was battling a sense of shame that would not allow him to acknowledge even to himself what he had done.

Reeva’s mother, June, was quoted in the Daily Mail as saying: “I have become another person too. People ask me what defines me, and it is Reeva's death. I am not the same person. I feel that and when I look in the mirror, I am not seeing me.”

This too resonated. Though I cannot begin to imagine what it is like to lose a child in such circumstances, I do know that when someone close to you dies horribly at someone else’s hand it is life-altering. You see the world and yourself differently.

It catapults you into a relationship of sorts with a person capable of extreme violence. And it invokes powerful, unwelcome emotions  — hatred, vengefulness, an inchoate sense of shame that you failed to protect your loved one.

Is it responsible to aid the release of a man into the community who has failed to take responsibility for his actions? If he has not internalised the enormity of what he has done, what is to stop him doing it again? 

When my book about my father’s murder came out last year, several people confided that they had lost someone to murder.

The latest crime statistics reveal there are, on average, 77 murders a day in South Africa.

This means a silent, ever expanding community of the violently bereaved.

The majority do not have the satisfaction of seeing the perpetrator locked up. Or the luxury of being able to confront him or her. Fewer than one in five murders ends in a conviction. 

I am haunted by a story that surfaced briefly in the media last week. A mother and her three children were hacked to death in their home in Mpumalanga. The story was a couple of paragraphs long, with little detail. Even their names were not given, only their ages. The youngest was six. This is likely the last we will hear of them.

I was in London a couple of years ago when Sarah Everard was kidnapped, raped and murdered by a policeman. From the moment she was reported missing, the media blitzed the story. The country followed every step of the investigation and subsequent trial and conviction of the murderer. Everard’s brief life was properly celebrated and her murder publicly vindicated.  

Though England and Wales combined have a population the same size as South Africa's, there are just under 700 homicides a year, and 80% of perpetrators are convicted. 

When my family are asked whether Thomas should be paroled, I am not sure what I would say. Retribution is not what I am after. But given our rate of murder, is it responsible to aid the release of a man into the community who has failed to take responsibility for his actions? If he has not internalised the enormity of what he has done, what is to stop him doing it again? 

• McGregor is author of 'Unforgiven: Face to Face with My Father’s Killer', published in 2022 by Jonathan Ball Publishers