Most South Africans and most of the world are wondering if Oscar Pistorius did intentionally kill his beloved.

 

The questions on everyone’s lips are: if he did intentionally kill Reeva, was it in a fit of rage; if it wasn’t intentional, was it his fear of being killed by intruders that drove him to shooting blindly into a locked door. The fear of death, at the hands of criminals, in South Africa is an emotion that most, if not all South Africans accept and live with every day. Was it this abnormally heightened level of fear that caused this tragedy or was it jealousy or rage?

 

As South Africans, we are hoping that this current televised court case (a ground-breaking first in South Africa), will give us the answers to these vital questions.

 

Whether or not the truth is fully revealed, one truth is certain, it was an emotion that drove Pistorius to act in the way he did, in the early hours of February 14, 2013. An emotion so intense, it drove him to ending another human being’s life, intentionally.

 

On the very same day, one year later, a motorist is wounded and a motorcyclist is shot dead at the side of the road in North Riding, North of Johannesburg. The area is some kilometres away from the Pistorius incident. The catalyst for the incident is road rage, but is the shooting of the motorcyclist road rage or self-defence? Rumour has it that the motorcyclist becomes angry with the motorist for not allowing him to pass, during peak traffic and as a result assaults the motorist. The motorist then in “self-defence” shoots the motorcyclist - killing him. What prompted this unnecessary tragic event? Can we say, it all began with an emotion or impulse - out of control? A situation where anger got the better of two individuals and they were not able to delay the gratification of acting out of that anger. We often use the term, “venting”. In this case, it was venting in the extreme.

 

The motorist, motorcyclist and Pistorius are not unlike most of us. As human beings, each and every one of us acts, as a result of some emotion or impulse we feel. Whether it’s fear, rage, annoyance, anxiety, dissatisfaction or even jealousy. Without an impulse, we are not prompted to act. Most human beings find it difficult to keep the emotion in check and delay just going with it.

 

Daniel Goleman, a psychologist and an expert on Emotional Intelligence, states in his book called Emotional Intelligence, “There is perhaps no psychological skill more fundamental than resisting impulse. It is the root of all emotional self-control, since all emotions, by their very nature, lead to one or other impulse to act.

Oscar Pistorius’ trial has been dubbed the ‘trial of the century’ and is receiving a lot of media attention. A young woman has died, under tragic circumstances and the fate of her killer lies in the evidence, the prosecutions ability to create a picture from that evidence, and the ability of the defence to create reasonable doubt. The same concept can be applied to data management within an organisation.

 

Typically, we think of data as information captured in a database. The evidence used in this trial serves as a reminder that data is simply raw information and can take many forms.
A court case presents evidence - data - and draws conclusions based on this data. This can be likened to the decision-making process of any business. Ironically, in a court case, the prosecution and the defence are each pushing for diametrically opposed conclusions – innocence or guilt, using the same data.

 

While the merits of the case are for the court to decide, what has been interesting is the legal process itself, and how the opposing counsel is applying data management principles to support their desired outcomes.

 

Indeed, the outcome of this case could depend on the data management principles of data governance and data quality.