Where(fore) art thou, Roger Young?

I know Roger Young from Hotbox Studios, my ex-husband's recording studio. I met him at 18 when he was deputy editor at the short-lived but very edgy cultural youth magazine Mahala with Andy Davis. Young was part of the community of brave young artists, filmmakers, and journalists who saw themselves as post-racial, the first representatives of a truly integrated segment of society, as Mahala's editor, Andy Davis, put it.  

Nowadays, Young alternates between being a filmmaker, photographer, heroin addict and journalist. Back then there was never anything needy about Young's appearance. Yes, he had the dishevelled look of most of his ilk and yes, he would wait for you to pick up the tab at the bar or ask for a hotdog if you ran into him at Oppikoppi. But he was a bon vivant. Chubby, exuberant. A man of piercing intelligence with a near-uncontrolled contrarian nature that regularly got him into trouble.

I hadn't seen Young since Oppikoppi 2015 when my ex and I shared a drink or two with him. Recently, Young's name has been slipping into conversations or it pops up on my Facebook feed. His posts have devolved into a desperate plea for help, claiming that he had ended up on the street due to a family dispute. After months of begging for assistance, people grew fed up with Young's emotive statements online and accused him of being a fraud.

Today on Facebook, his skin seems stretched too tightly over his face. The light deepens the shadows in his eyes, and the hollows in his cheeks enhance the prominence of his cheekbones. Gone is the healthy good-times glow of his XXL corpulence. I follow the debate online of Young's whereabouts and wonder what happened to the charming guy I first met at Hotbox Studios.

On impulse one Monday afternoon, I decide to go look for him in Durban. I get into my car in Pretoria and check with Schalk Bezuidenhout (the only person I know in Durban) if I can stay with him for three days, to meet up with Young and listen to his story.

Young ran away from his home in Westville, near Durban, after a major falling out with his father when he was 17 years old. He travelled down the coast to Cape Town, where he established a career as a filmmaker. He got involved in a three-year-long court case in which he testified that his father had attacked one of his friends on his 16th birthday, whom he had mistaken for a criminal due to his skin colour. This is all according to Roger himself.

After a family tragedy in his late twenties that left him devastated he lived on the streets for nearly a decade. Part of it was a struggle with addiction. Those times on the street gave him a true perspective on the weaves and threads of Cape Town life and a special interest in the notion of white privilege. Roger co-founded the edgy online magazine Mahala with Andy Davis.

Davis recalls: “I first met Roger Young in around 1994 or 1995, he was my brother Simon’s friend and they were throwing raves together in Johannesburg, called Looking for Love. A few years later, in 2000 or 2001 we crossed paths again, he was a filmmaker and photographer in Cape Town and I was the staff writer at SL Magazine.

“Roger shot editorials for the magazine and we established an easy working relationship. I have always admired his creative spark and energy. He frequently produced excellent work. He also bombed out on a few occasions. But that was normal. Most importantly he always had a considered point of view and was radically contrarian.”

“He was terribly hard to please, [yet] mischievous and loads of fun. By 2002, SL Magazine was bought and relocated to Johannesburg. I was promoted to editor and I employed Roger as the magazine’s staff photographer. By 2003, Roger was in rehab and I was phoning all his friends and trying to raise enough money to keep him there.”

“I moved back to Cape Town in 2003 and lost contact with Roger for a few years. By 2009 Roger had got himself clean and productive and was in Cape Town trying to put his life back together. I had a few good years doing content for corporates and wanted to start my own magazine. Roger was looking for work. We had had a good working relationship in the past and, as above, I admired his perspective and creativity.”

“We co-founded Mahala in the sense that I came up with the name, wrote the business plan, got the logo and website designed, wrote for and edited the mag (both the online and print versions), did the accounts, published and sold the ads. Roger came on board as my deputy editor, from day one and in many ways he was the life of the party. He lived and breathed Mahala and was the main connection point to the culture we reported on. He had his finger firmly on the pulse, discovered the talent and largely directed this chaotic orchestra of a magazine we were creating. He was in many ways the glue and the tone of the magazine often embodied his own humour and cynicism.”

Although Young came from a privileged background – and by privileged I mean his parents were wealthy and he attended a private boys' school – his family now rarely has contact with him. Two years ago, he moved back to Durban to look after his sick mother with whom he has a close bond, but he says in June his visiting privileges were cut short by his sister.

The landscape I drive through is one of unusual beauty. I feel inspired by the rolling green hills while the sun sets. Then I become aware of the splatter of rain against my window and how black clouds dwarf the landscape within moments. The wind shakes my car. I turn off at the nearest petrol station in Harrismith and wait for the storm to subside.

The northwestern part of KwaZulu-Natal is known as The Land of Memory, and the eight hours alone on the road throughout the evening gives me ample time to reflect on the past year and those times when I knew Roger merely as a bit of a bad boy with too much confidence. Charming, even attractive. One of those dirty rock & roll journalists, you know. They don't exist anymore; he was the last of his kind.

I had sent Young a message on Facebook to see if he was willing to meet up with me. He agreed but warned me that he shared a phone with someone and it wouldn't be easy to get hold of him.

After 45 minutes of lifting various doormats in Ballito, I finally find Bezuidenhout's house key and jump in his pool at 12:45 in the morning. Bezuidenhout is in Plett for a Christmas show. I'm up just before 6:00, trying to determine where the park is where Roger has been living for the last four months. By 7:00, I'm at a Seattle Coffee Co. close by, armed with coffee for the search. A silver fox in Docs performs a little dance before me and introduces himself. Sugar farmer. He shares his number. I could do with a sugar daddy.

Young had insisted we meet at sunrise in front of St. James Church in Morningside where he sleeps on the steps, but he's nowhere to be found. I chat with people around the church. Nobody knows who Roger Young is. Perhaps my idea of sunrise differs from Roger's. I try calling. No luck.

I try to chat with the homeless man standing next to me who's busy rummaging through his bag. He has good hiking gear, I notice. His clothes are clean. His Aztec shoes must have cost around R2 000. His hair is freshly cut, and his tattoos aren't from the street. I wonder how many mothers secretly support a child living on the street.

I wander through a quiet tree-lined street, past crumbling art deco houses, and delight in the wonderful vegetation, completely unaware of the things lurking around me behind Moses Mabhida Stadium.

After looking around Sutton Park where Young allegedly spends most of his day, I get into my car. Then I imagine seeing him by the jungle gym, half-naked, crouching, palm branch in hand. I watch the figure making even strokes across the sand. When I approach, I realise it's not him.

Tyler extends his hand, smiles, and continues sweeping wildly. Young sends me a message just after I've stopped in front of Bezuidenhout's house again. He feels dazed and confused, he says. “Where are you?"

I get back into my car to drive from Ballito to Morningside. The first trip took 40 minutes. Three hours to search for Roger. Plus the 40 minutes to drive back. But I’m glad we've managed to find each other.

On the way to uMhlanga, I lose control of my steering wheel at a bend on the M12, hit a car, yank my steering wheel back, land on two wheels, regain my balance, and stop on the yellow line. The driver's door of my car is badly damaged. I need to crawl out on the left, but at least no one is injured. After we exchange numbers, I crawl back in, shaken yet grateful. Back in Morningside I park my car at the nearest Engen and find Young in the park. His features soften when he sees me. We sit on a bench.

He’s wearing torn denim jeans and a black long-sleeve shirt with paw prints that say “Woof Woof Meow”. His hair is messy yet neatly cut. A waft of street and sweat fills the space between us on the bench. He tells me how he first ended up on the streets after confronting his father about his alcoholism.

“The last thing I said to my dad was, ‘Why don’t you go home and kill yourself?' and then he did. That was in 2002. Then I kind of lost my mind and lived on the streets from 2002 to 2007. When I got off the streets, I started Mahala with Andy."

“Andy made a lot of money. That’s how Mahala fell apart. I got hold of the books. Anyway, it was worth it."

(Davis denies this. “Mahala never made any money. It was an online blog and a print mag we gave away for free. Advertising was supposed to float it, but it never did, possibly because we dissed everyone. I pulled all the accounts for Roger to show how much money I lost over the years.”)

“And then I got to City Press, and City Press paid well until that whole incident at UCT. I confronted UCT because they allowed this young black student to rape girls in his class. After all, he brought in sponsors and donors. They didn’t want me to expose him. I was working on my PhD at UCT. I lost all my funding.

“Three girls had testified. He was suspended and then allowed back into classes. The girls had to study via videos in their dorm rooms. And then, a year later, he wrote an article about how I am a liar, and that I will regret it. City Press no longer wants to publish me. Many people I worked with just stopped talking to me and said I should never have discussed a young black man's sexuality in public."

The University of Cape Town (UCT) responded to Young's article in City Press at the time, denying the allegations that they had not taken action against the aforementioned student: “There is no evidence for this statement. Mr Mpongo was charged and found guilty on four serious charges and a sanction was imposed; he was not, and has not been, forgiven."

I don’t eat alone

“The situation I’m in now is a public issue because it’s not just my story. There are so many layers to it. My story is my story, but I have become part of a community of people who need my help. When I eat, I don’t eat alone. It’s a problem. You know, there’s a saying that kindness is a weakness, and that’s part of the culture here.

“All my relationships here are transactional. I can’t exactly say on Facebook that I deal with people who steal from me. Crystal meth has taken over this whole park. If I go to the shop and buy food, someone will offer me meth or heroin, but you also get people on the street who are too poor to do drugs, and they mean nothing to the society here."

I ask: “You know your friends wake up every morning to see if you're still alive on Facebook?"

“Yes, well, I had to fight last night because I had R50 and someone wanted to take it from me. I’ve been in the hospital so many times this year. If I had a room with a laptop and my medication, I would have been able to write this thing out of my system. I can’t keep sharing these desperate Facebook posts; my story needs to be told in totality. Although I must admit that someone deposited R100 into my account last night, and I don’t know who it is.

“This is not my dream, but I see the value in it. I see the value in the kids down there. They are fucking intelligent people, and their lives are fucked up."

“If I leave Durban, I will never see my mom again. My sister sent me an email yesterday: ‘Mom is quickly deteriorating, you're not welcome at her funeral.' I always had such a good time with my mom. Like hanging out with her during the day, watching TV, walking through the botanical gardens ... Her mind was sharp. Now she’s in a retirement home.”

(While I’m talking to Young on the park bench, my car keys disappear, but I only realise it later.)

“I had to kick Max du Preez away from a bullet after they started shooting at the Vrye Weekblad offices. I was writing film reviews for them. Once, I was in a car with two guys from the SABC and this British guy when someone threw a hand grenade into the car in a UN combi. And everyone was just calm. Three or four days later, they shot that guy from the Bang Bang Club, Ken Oosterbroek.”

(Max du Preez, VWB editor, has no recollection of this, calling it a thumbsuck story.)

Young hesitates before continuing.

“In 2007, I was raped by a group of men with a bag over my head, that’s how I got off the streets. That incident coloured everything in my life...

“I just want to get my film out into the world, Love Runs Out. So this is what I want to do now. I started publishing stories on Medium, with 118 entries in total; 40 biographies and 60 stories, and some of the stories are about the background to 2007.

Happy childhood and a drunk dad

“I had a very happy childhood until I turned 16 when my dad beat up my friend on my birthday, and I got involved in that court case for three years. My dad was that fun dad, the dad who would give you your first drink. After that incident, I ran away from home. My friend Brian, the one my dad punched, and I went to work in a clothing store in Cape Town, flying back and forth for the court case. My dad and I didn’t talk for ten years after that until the week he passed away. But my dad was really cool, everyone loved him, he built me a mobile disco unit so I could DJ at parties.”

“My mom gave my dad an ultimatum and told him he had a year to stop drinking. She also bought him an apartment. After that year, he unexpectedly showed up at my sister’s house in Pretoria, assuming my mom would take him back. My sister panicked and called me to say that my dad was drunk and smashing the glass in the alcohol cabinet. So I rushed to Pretoria and got him Chinese takeaways, which he refused to eat. He insisted on alcohol. And then I put him on a bus with a bottle of whiskey and told him to go drink himself to death. And then he did.”

It appears his father died of alcohol poisoning that weekend when he got back to Durban.

I return to the Engen where the manager Mohammed had clamped a wheel of my car because it has been there longer than the 15 minutes allowed. He is now demanding R2 000, which I don’t have. After negotiating for 45 minutes in the parking area, I realise my car keys are gone. Mohammed, his son Jacob and I go through all the camera footage at the petrol station and we become friends.

Roger demands that all the drug addicts on Percy Street look for my keys in the park. The sex workers are very thorough with such tasks because they’re on meth and focused, says he. After three hours of this, Roger announces I’m now part of the Republic of Percy Street. It looks like I’m not going anywhere. It starts to rain.

No coding for the key

One of the people from the republic gives me the number of someone who can cut a new key, for R2 000. We all gather around my car in the rain. By 20:30, a new key has been cut. Roger and I drink Engen coffee and eat a doughnut. Torrik, who has cut the key, now tells me that he has been unable to code the key. So, it's not working. Suddenly, I’m completely broke. The republic is creeping closer.

Lovemore, a petrol attendant, brings me a chair. The moment I sit down, the shock of the accident kicks in, and I can feel how sore my body is. It’s getting late. A sex worker chats with herself in the street. I swallow my pride and call my ex-husband.

Meanwhile, Lovemore tells me stories about the street. This Roger, he has money, Lovemore informs me. He doesn’t beg like the others (Lovemore doesn’t use Facebook so wouldn't know about the posts). He buys food for everyone here at the petrol station every day. He’s decent, just a victim of his circumstances. He doesn’t steal. You have to give him a chance, says Lovemore. “Go see his mom, tell her you’ll look after him.”

Roger joins us again. “You know, being homeless is like going to a music festival without bands. By this time, I at least knew how to sleep on a floor. I think telling people’s stories is more important than having a roof over your head. Stories make you feel a little less alone. There are still four or five films I want to make. And I’d like to start a rehabilitation centre to get people off the streets. No one does anything real about homelessness. Portugal is a good example of a country that gets it right. Being homeless is illegal in South Africa."

I accidentally book myself into a brothel for the night. As I lay in the scratchy sheets listening to the murmurs from the thin walls, I can't help but wonder, who is Roger Young?

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