Judging South Africa’s progress

Next Thursday final judgment will be delivered in the Oscar Pistorius murder trial. Five months after it started, and after 41 days of court, plus an election, political dramas, and an Ebola crisis on the continent, South Africans could be forgiven for growing jaded by the case. But it seems there is no end to the interest in this fallen hero's fate.

The South African stand-up Loyiso Gola joked in one of his recent shows that black South Africans were relieved when they realised that, for once, no black person was involved in the case. Then he paused. “Well, except for the fact that the judge is black.” This had the Africans in the audience roaring with laughter. “And she is not only black but a black woman,” he said to applause.

From outside it might seem strange that this could be such a source of amusement. But that an African woman, Judge Thokozile Masipa, will decide the outcome of one of the highest-profile cases of recent times is an astonishing testament to how much South Africa has changed.

Over the past 20 years its judicial system has been transformed from its days of white dominance. The courts are very different places from the ones Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo were hoping to appear in as lawyers. But when it comes to gender representation on the bench, statistics tell a very different story. Only 76 of 239 judges are women, and very few are black women.

Apart from the defendant himself, almost all of the main characters in the Pistorius court drama have been men, including the two senior councils. As the months went by, public curiosity shifted to Masipa, the tiny woman in red robes who gently and repeatedly checked if Pistorius was well enough to go on under cross-examination.

Exceptional life

The 66-year-old judge's life is exceptional for a black woman born, in Soweto, during the height of apartheid. After secondary school Masipa studied social work at university. She became first a social worker and then a journalist, rapidly making her mark and becoming editor of the women's section of the Post newspaper, a position that in apartheid South Africa would have been reserved for a white woman.

More typically, during her time as a journalist in the 1970s she became involved with anti-apartheid protests, and was arrested for her activities. A friend arrested with her tells the story of how the police in the holding cells told them to clean the dirty, overflowing toilets. Masipa refused – a hugely courageous act at a time when torture of black female activists often involved horrendous violence.

As a journalist Masipa did some court reporting that stimulated a deeper interest in South Africa’s legal system. At an age when most people start thinking of taking it easier, she went back to university to study law. In the year of Mandela’s release, when she was 43, she started her legal career. Eight years later she was only the second black woman to be made a judge of the high court of South Africa.

When it was announced that she was to preside over the Pistorius case, South African legal experts argued that this would not be in Pistorius’s favour. Masipa had made a name on the bench for her tough sentencing in cases of domestic violence, sexual violence and abuse. South Africa has some of highest rates of domestic and sexual violence in the world, and perpetrators often get very light, or suspended, sentences. But in one case Masipa sentenced a man to 252 years in prison for raping three women. She also gave a life sentence to a policeman who shot and killed his wife over their divorce settlement. The judge has eloquently argued for severe punishment in domestic-abuse cases, saying that the home is the one place where everyone should feel safe.

It is now up to Masipa to decide what happened that night between Pistorius and Reeva Steenkamp, his girlfriend. The judge’s interpretation plays a more important role than in most murder cases. It is not a question of deciding on the basis of forensic and other evidence whether Pistorius killed Steenkamp. We know that he did. What Masipa has to rule on is whether she believes his claim that it was a terrible mistake, that he thought she was an intruder.

Masipa’s ruling will probably be appealed, so she must be meticulous in her judgment. On Thursday millions of people around the world will hang on every word of the woman who has walked a long road to decide the fate of South Africa’s former golden boy.

Melanie Verwoerd is a former South African ambassador to Ireland