CAPE TOWN – Marvin Sampson may be the unofficial mayor of Mitchells Plain but he didn’t always have it all together. Recently, Sampson (51), celebrated his 16th year of recovery from addiction.
“I’ve gone from a boy from Beacon Valley, skarreling in the town centre, to the office of the mayor. Nothing is impossible for God,” Sampson said.
Things came full circle for Sampson recently when he was the guest speaker at the same rehab where he first found recovery.
“I’m so proud of wanting to tell my story wherever I can,” Sampson said. “This last Sunday, I went to Toevlug because I was at Toevlug in 2009.”
He recounts how he reached recovery only after his wife wanted to divorce him. By then he had lost multiple jobs and his dignity, and he had sold everything in his home. His wife was no longer giving him meals and he was begging for “kayangs” in the town centre. He had tried to take his own life three times because he could not see a way out of his addiction.
But it wasn’t until his wife filed for divorce that he made a change, he said.
“I thought to myself, ‘am I going to choose the addiction, or am I going to choose my family? I decided I’m going to stop using drugs and I started looking for a rehab.”
Roots of addiction
Sampson said the roots of his addiction started in his childhood. His parents were both alcoholics and his father abused his mother physically, emotionally, financially and sexually.
“I would sometimes hear my mother cry in the room and, being the eldest of five brothers, I would open the door. And I would see him sexually abusing my mother,” Sampson recalls.
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The dysfunction led to his first suicide attempt at the age of 14. He woke up in hospital, after he had overdosed on medication, and social workers were called in to help, but nothing changed.
“That episode passed and you know life just continued as normal as if I was just naughty,” he said.
Downward spiral
Sampson grew up, got married and started a family, but his descent into addiction was gradual, starting with using cigarettes, weed and alcohol socially but at the height of his addiction he was using four different drugs.
His wife, however, was oblivious.
“And then one day, 10 years later, a friend of mine, a drinking buddy, said; ‘brother, you need to stop. Can’t you see what this stuff is doing to you?’.”
Sampson ignored him, but the friend told his wife about his addiction.
“My wife never knew I was using drugs because she was in control of the finances. She had my bank card, so there was no suspicion because there was no money missing,” he said, adding that he had been stealing at work to support his addiction and this eventually led to him losing his job. That was when he started stealing from home.
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“My wife would buy Christmas clothes for the children and I would take their clothes, with the shoes, and I would sell it. I took the TV, I took the microwave, I took the DVD surround sound system. She would buy me clothes and I would take the clothes and sell them for drugs. I even sold the washing machine. I took the aluminum pots from the cupboard, and I would make it flat and take it to the scrapyard, just to get my hands on drugs.
“I even sold the furniture. The last thing I took was the fridge. When my wife went to work, I remember, there was nothing left to steal anymore, so I took the fridge. I put it in a Shoprite trolley and I sold it for R60, just to get my hands on drugs.
“I didn’t care about my children, their well-being. I didn’t care about my wife. It was all about me and my addiction. I became the father I hated because I started abusing my wife. I started abusing my children. Not physically, but emotionally.”
Sampson said that his wife became so fed-up that she stopped giving him meals and sharing the same bed with him.
“What sober woman wants to share her bed with a drug addict who doesn’t wash, who doesn’t brush teeth and who looks like a bergie but at the time, in my mind, I thought she was having an affair,” Sampson recounts.
“But one thing I deeply respect about my wife, even though she was hateful towards me, even though she wanted to divorce me, she always told the boys, ‘it doesn’t matter what your father does, he is still your father’.”
Recovery
It was only when his wife reached the point of considering divorce when Sampson hit rock bottom and considered recovery. Now, 16 years later, he maintains his sobriety through faith.
Recently, he also turned his attention to politics, first as a PR councillor for the Patriotic Alliance in city council and later he accepted a post in the mayor’s office.
“The joke in the office is that Geordin Hill-Lewis is the mayor of the city and Marvin is the mayor of Mitchells Plain. Even he’s aware of the joke,” Marvin said.
He now wants to use this knowledge of the inner workings of council to uplift others.
“I really want to bring about change. I want to change people’s lives positively, and I want to help,” he said.
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