Oscar Pistorius murder case strikes at the heart of South Africa's Rainbow Nation The perceived infallibility of Pistorius illustrates the inherent absurdity of heroism in sport. But his fall also forces South Africa to confront a far more uncomfortable truth: that the utopian ideals it has embraced in the post-apartheid era, and which Pistorius by his charisma seemed so deeply to understand, might just be a cruel illusion. With the tarnishing of this emblem of the new South Africa, photographed more than once alongside Nelson Mandela, the challenge is to stop the taint from spreading to everything he was meant to represent. His PR people intuit as much: hence the misplaced reference to his "inspirational" story in his statement denying the murder of a 29-year-old woman. There is an unseemly scramble to preserve some semblance of his mystique, even at a time when prosecutors are preparing to pursue a charge that could spell life imprisonment. I interviewed Pistorius on three occasions, and it was seldom difficult to see how this canonisation had happened. Whether it was his delicate Afrikaans inflection, or his flawless manners, he inspired a powerful cult of personality. We had lunch last summer in Italy, at his Olympic training base in the Friulian mountains, and it has been haunting to re-read the transcript of that meeting in light of recent horrors. Even the gentlest vignettes, about how the hostess at his hotel would bake him cakes or how the mayor of Gemona had all but adopted him as a son, have rather lost their innocence. So, too, have his statements of humility about wearing the colours of South Africa. "My upbringing in South Africa was very carefree," he said. I was never much of an academic in school, so sport was the escape. To compete for my country makes me incredibly proud. We still have a lot of issues in South Africa, not just in the economy and the poverty, but sport is something that the whole country can unite around. People can forget their problems. No longer, alas. Indeed, for three convulsive days Pistorius, once the emblematic poster-boy who refused to cleave along racial lines, has been the prism accentuating the nation's most deep-seated ills. One newspaper website had to close its readers" comments section due to toxic expressions of racism. Accusations abounded that the failure of a black government to deal forcefully with crime had led to an unimpeachable white man accidentally killing his partner. Subsequent police revelations have presented a different account, forcing Pistorius's supporters to revise their beliefs about a person formerly presumed to be incapable of wrong. With a looming murder trial, the process will be extended and painful. For a decade Pistorius had been the advertisers" cherub of choice, photogenic and with a backstory that rendered him a potent inspiration on blades. His struggle crystallised a national spirit of perseverance and at the Olympics, South Africans could not have been happier to hoist him aloft as one of their own. For such images to be supplanted by the past week's dreadful tale is a source of great anguish. Pistorius was a constant through his supply of positive news in an often crime-torn land; his was the last house anybody ever expected to see surrounded by a police cordon. And yet if Cronje's downfall had taught South Africa anything, it had been the folly of ascribing moral virtue to a sportsman. The determination in Pistorius's homeland not to let him flicker and fade like Cronje is mirrored in the fate of previous South African sports figures accused of violence against women. James Small, a member of the 1995 Rugby World Cup-winning team, admitted striking a former fiancée in 2001 but has since gone on to become a successful businessman. His fellow former Springbok, Percy Montgomery also spent a night in prison after his wife brought an assault charge, later withdrawn. The fact that these cases had no career-limiting effect for the men involved has prompted freelance South African journalist Rebecca Davis to argue: "We have to work on developing alternative masculinities: ones that prize virtues other than being able to run the fastest." It is true that, away from the track, Pistorius could be both an adrenalin junkie and an unabashed alpha male, as shown by the 172 stitches he needed to repair his face after crashing his boat into a submerged pier on the Vaal River in 2009. But such excesses were always offset by his charming public persona, and his effective proselytising of the Paralympic message. As Hennie Kotze, his relay coach, explains: "It was the way he handled his disability with such character and discipline." His countrymen knew from anecdotal reports that Pistorius kept a baseball bat by his bed and a machine gun by his window, and saw from his row with Brazil's Alan Oliveira in London that he was not immune to moments of arrogance, but still the golden story endured. Still, he was beloved Oscar, born without his lower legs and yet supremely gifted in the one field he was not meant to flourish in. I remember what he told me on that summer's afternoon in Italy, preparing for his maiden Olympics: "I want to enjoy this. I might not ever be able to explain this to someone, so I want to remember the experience. This is the blessing that I have. That blessing, sadly, is now South Africa's curse.