Hardback: At the end of Reeva's funeral, June Steenkamp's brother-in-law, Mike, said, "Reeva stood against abuse against innocent women and that stand is more powerful now. She represented a world of strength and people coming out of the church are stronger."
Whatever happened in the small hours of 14 February 2013 will always stand as a double tragedy for two wonderful young people and their families. The lives of two gifted talents, two incredible role models have been shattered. It is just such a waste.
Reeva (2014) is the tragic story of the girl at the heart of the most dramatic trial of the twenty-first century.
In the early hours of Valentine's Day 2013, Olympic athlete Oscar Pistorius killed his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, shooting her multiple times while she cowered behind the locked door of a tiny toilet cubicle in their bathroom. His trial attracted more international media attention and public scrutiny than any since that of O J Simpson.
What went on behind the scenes though? And what was the real Reeva like, away from the photo shoots and the attention of the media?
A beautiful twenty-nine-year-old from Port Elizabeth, Reeva graduated as a lawyer and used her public profile as a model, TV personality and socialite in South Africa's most vibrant city to campaign passionately for human rights causes.
Keenly aware of the most violent end of the spectrum of abuse, Reeva shared with her Twitter followers the shocking fact that in South Africa, a woman is raped every four minutes and a woman killed by her partner every eight hours...a mother being forced to sell her fourteen-year-old daughter for R7000 to an old man, an old man who could have had Aids or something; a father locking a girl in a room and letting a series of men rape her for money; mothers who were forced to take their young girls to walk the railway line, a well-known area for prostitutes.
Her relationship with international hero Oscar Pistorius seemed like a fairy tale of triumph over adversity - double amputee turned champion athlete mets small-town girl with beauty and brains wanting to make her mark on the world.
No one could have predicted the tragic and horrifying conclusion.
Reeva's mother, June Steenkamp, has kept a dignified silence in the face of public scrutiny, media intrusion and of course, the bereavement she has endured. Until now, no one has truly known what she is feeling, or how she has coped since her youngest child, her 'darling daughter' and 'late lamb', was shot dead. Powerful and unflinching, and revealing all the details of the sensational trial and its verdict, Reeva offers the only true insider's account of this heartbreaking tale.
June Steenkamp has established the Reeva Rebecca Steenkamp Foundation - an anti-abuse foundation based in the family's hometown of Port Elizabeth in South Africa's Eastern Cape province - as a shelter to give vulnerable women and children across the country the skills and confidence to support themselves independently, to learn how to be productive and regain their self-esteem and to empower women. "It is a fitting legacy and what Reeva would have wanted as a legacy," wrote June Steenkamp.
About June Steenkamp: Reeva's mother is originally from Blackburn, Lancashire, and moved to Cape Town with her first husband. She married Barry Steenkamp in the summer of 1981 and gave birth to Reeva, her 'late lamb', in 1983.
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