Tucked away in one of South Africa‘s most affluent suburbs, the Goddess Cafe in Waterkloof is a shrine of femininity.
Described by its owners as a ‘pink paradise’, even the burger buns and lattes are served in shades of that colour. Dishes are sprinkled with rose petals. Cerise-coloured parasols and blossom adorn the ceilings and walls.
Here, in this somewhat incongruous setting, convicted killer Oscar Pistorius has been seen lunching with his girlfriend Rita Greyling.
The former Paralympic athlete’s appearance in an establishment frequented by wealthy young women and social media influencers is seen by some as a sure sign of just how serious he is about their romance.
According to a source: ‘You can’t imagine a less likely place to see Oscar Pistorius but he and Rita hold hands and look lovingly across the table at each other. He is besotted with her. You can see they are deeply in love.’
More, shortly, of this burgeoning relationship between Pistorius and Rita, 33, who looks uncannily like Reeva Steenkamp, the girlfriend he shot dead on Valentine’s Day in 2013.
More, too, of Pistorius’s admission to a friend that having put his criminal past behind him he wants to marry and start a family. He is also relaunching his sporting career having taken part in an Ironman triathlon in June.
But while the 38-year-old, who was freed from jail on parole in January 2024, is moving on with his life, the British mother of the woman he murdered is in hospital, critically ill after suffering a stroke nearly three weeks ago.
Former Paralympic athlete Oscar Pistorius (right) killed his former girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp (left) on Valentine’s Day in 2013
Pistorius’ new girlfriend Rita Greyling (above), who he has been seen romancing across South Africa, looks uncannily like Reeva
Friends of June Steenkamp, 78, fear she may not even remember her beloved daughter.
‘It’s heart-breaking to think that she might not be able to remember what happened to Reeva,’ a family friend told the Daily Mail.
‘She is barely able to speak. It’s impossible to follow what she is saying or have a conversation. She doesn’t know her own name and doesn’t recognise people. She is seriously ill and the doctors cannot tell us yet the full extent of the damage to her brain.’
According to family lawyer Tania Coen, who was caring for June at her home when she suffered the stroke, the mask of grief she has worn since losing Reeva on Valentine’s Day 2013 has slipped.
‘It’s as if she’s gone back to the person she was before Reeva died,’ says Tania, a close friend of June’s for years.
‘She was always a warm and loving person but now she smiles in a way she hasn’t smiled for so many years.’
June’s stroke comes two years to the month that her heartbroken husband Barry, 80, died, two years after meeting Pistorius in prison.
There, stable owner and horse trainer Barry asked Pistorius, a devout Christian, to swear on a Bible that he did not mean to kill Reeva, 29, when he shot her four times through a locked toilet door at his home in Pretoria.
The double amputee athlete, who insists he mistook Reeva for an intruder, refused. It was proof, said Barry, that he was a cold-blooded killer and liar who had killed their daughter in a fit of rage.
June’s inability to say more than a few words is particularly heart-rending given that in the wake of Reeva’s murder, she vowed to become her daughter’s voice by raising awareness of violence and abuse against women and children through a foundation set up in her name.
She carried on fundraising for victims even while privately facing financial hardship which forced her to put her home up for sale.
‘It’s a cruel twist of fate that while Pistorius has been able to turn over a new leaf and embark on a new life, his crime has had a lifelong impact on June,’ says the family friend.
Friends of June Steenkamp (above) fear she may not even remember her beloved daughter after she suffered a stroke and is now critically ill
‘He’s had a second chance but there was no starting again for June and Barry.’ Even crueller, say those that know her, is that after Barry’s death in 2023 and Pistorius’s release in January 2024, June decided to move on with her life, living quietly with her dog, cat, horse, donkey and 40 chickens on her small-holding near Port Elizabeth.
Tania says: ‘June said she wanted to live the rest of her life in peace and she has been doing that. She had done everything she could to be Reeva’s voice and wanted to close that chapter of the Oscar story.’
Hoping to break even further from the tragic past, June had recently planned to move back to the UK – where she was born and raised in Blackburn, Lancashire, and where her eldest daughter, Simone, lives. She had even organised a pet passport for her Ridgeback dog Taboo.
But, says Tania, who is now trying to raise money for June’s care: ‘She can’t leave now and it’s not yet clear what the future will hold.’
It’s hard to imagine a more stark contrast, then, between the fates of Reeva’s mother and the once-feted Paralympic gold medallist who murdered her daughter. While Pistorius is living in a luxury cottage in the grounds of his uncle’s £2million property in Pretoria, June has, according to her lawyer, been ‘living in poverty’.
Surrounded by overgrown grass and weeds, the gates to her property have long been broken. Said to be worth no more than £50,000, the family friend who spoke to the Mail this week said June had been forced to put it up for sale before her stroke because she could not afford repairs.
Yet while June’s health has become increasingly frail, Pistorius’s appears to be going from strength to strength.
Three months ago, the man once dubbed Blade Runner because of the speed at which he could sprint on his prosthetic limbs, returned to competitive sport after being given permission by his parole officer to compete in a triathlon in Durban.
He came 555th overall and third in the ‘physically challenged’ category after spending the last 18 months focused on regaining his fitness – and reversing the muscle decline he suffered in prison – with the help of private doctors and trainers.
But it is Pistorius’s relationship with the daughter of one of South Africa’s wealthiest farmers which could cement his rehabilitation.
Management consultant Rita Greyling, who like Reeva has also worked as a model, is a devout Christian, listing ‘God. Family. Fashion. Fitness,’ on Twitter as among the things that ‘excite me’.
Pistorius – known to friends and family as ‘Ozzie’ – has also embraced religion. He volunteers at the NG Kerk Waterkloof, the church attended by his uncle Arnold, who largely raised him after his mother’s death in 2002. As well as attending services, he performs light janitorial work.
According to a source: ‘He has said he wants to settle down and have kids. He sees it as the next step for them.’
Such a marriage would see the union of two powerful Afrikaans clans who have been in South Africa for more than a century.
Rita’s father is Barend Petrus Greyling, known as BP, whose family fought in South Africa’s Boer War. The family home is a 17,500-hectare farm in Wakkerstroom, Mpumalanga. Mr Greyling once said he hoped Rita and her younger sister would ‘marry men who know how to farm’.
The Pistorius wealth comes from a business empire founded by Oscar’s grandfather Hendrik Pistorius in 1944 which first focused on the supply of agricultural limestone but now spans the property, mining and tourism industries.
Pistorius (right) has insisted that he thought Reeva (left) was an intruder when he shot her
June Steenkamp’s family roots in the UK are far more humble. Her parents Harold and Irene worked in a factory. She left Shadsworth Secondary Modern aged 16 to train as a hairdresser and, a year later, married toolmaker Tony Cowburn. She was 18 when she gave birth to her eldest daughter, Simone.
June emigrated to South Africa with her family in 1965. When her marriage broke down, she raised her daughter alone, working as a hairdresser, dental assistant and on a department store beauty counter. Her love of riding eventually saw her meet divorced stable owner and horse trainer Barry Steenkamp. They married in 1983 and June gave birth to Reeva.
The loss of the daughter they doted on and lovingly referred to as their ‘laat lammetjie’ – ‘late lamb’ – left a scar of grief etched across both their lives.
When asked what would give her closure, says Tania, June would say: ‘If Reeva came back.’ Their daughter’s death also saw the couple’s financial fortunes spiral.
Barry had just been declared bankrupt after a debtor failed to pay him money he was owed.
Reeva, who was working in Johannesburg as a paralegal and model, had been helping with her parents’ bills. The publicity around her death saw the Steenkamps’ landlady evict them after learning of their financial situation.
It later emerged in court that Pistorius had paid the couple £340 a month for 18 months after Reeva’s murder at the request of their lawyer. But the Steenkamps refused a lump sum of compensation from the athlete saying they didn’t want his ‘blood money’.
Ill health saw the couple struggling further.
Barry, who was diagnosed with diabetes, suffered a stroke two months after Reeva’s death.
Even worse than financial security, however, was the loss of the man June married just ten days after their first date. ‘They shared the pain and their memories,’ says Tania. ‘June could speak openly with Barry.
‘They understood each other and were a support structure for each other. After he passed, she became like a hermit.’
June decided not to oppose Pistorius’s release on parole from prison in 2024 although she submitted a victim impact statement which saw him ordered to participate in anger management and gender-based violence programmes. He will remain on parole under strict conditions until his sentence expires in 2029. A parole officer checks on him at random hours of the day or night. He is subject to drug and alcohol testing. Visits to the nightclubs he once frequented with his friends are also forbidden. Nor can he use social media, give interviews or write an autobiography.
‘June has always said that the law must be allowed to take its course,’ says Tania.
For June Steenkamp the agony of Reeva’s death is unending. Pistorius, meanwhile, appears to be seizing his second chance.
