SHE WATCHES OVER ME

Cheslin Marsh tells of his healing process since the brutal attack that robbed him of his friend Hannah

- NASIFA SULAIMAN

HE CONSIDERED studying criminal law in the final year of his law degree – but it hit too close to home. He’s going to focus on intellectual property law instead so that it doesn’t bring him any­ where near the kind of people he’d have to encounter in criminal matters.

Nobody could blame Cheslin Marsh for wanting to steer clear of anyone who could remind him of the fateful day he nearly lost his life – the day his friend, Hannah Cornelius, was killed.

Cheslin has worked hard to overcome the trauma of the attack in May 2017. But he’s still haunted by Hannah’s murder in the five years since it happened, he says.

YOU meets Cheslin (25) at home in Wellington, about 40km from Stellen­ bosch, the Western Cape town where he and Hannah were kidnapped while they were studying at Stellenbosch University.

He makes himself comfortable on a couch in his grandmother’s living room. He wanted to do the interview at home, he says, because he wants to show peo­ ple where he comes from.

“When someone sees me, I want them to see where I come from and that if I can make it, they can too because we come from the same place.”

Cheslin recently received a bursary from the Reeva Rebecca Steenkamp Foundation for the final year of his law de­ gree at the University of the Western Cape next year. “I’m very happy,” says Cheslin, currently a third­year law student.

The bursary is a way to honour the legacy of Reeva Steenkamp, who was murdered by her boyfriend, para­athlete Oscar Pistorius, in 2013, says Tania Koen, co­chief executive of the foundation.