CONSTANTIA | WYNBERG
TUESDAY 18 August 2020 | Tel: 021 910 6500 | Email: post@peoplespost.co.za | Website: www.peoplespost.co.za
@ThePeoplesPost
People’s Post
HOUT BAY
‘He lit up everyone’s life’ NETTALIE VILJOEN NETTALIE.VILJOEN@MEDIA24.COM
Y
ears from now, when families and friends get together and end up talking about this sister or that cousin lost to Covid-19 in 2020, the death of Raymind Samuels, who passed away in the same year, won’t be ascribed to the virus – but maybe it should be. At 12:51 on Thursday 6 August, family members of Samuels alerted the NSRI emergency operations centre that they had located and recovered the 23-year-old’s body close to Duiker Island in Hout Bay – the same place where he had gone missing four days earlier. While the exact circumstances surrounding his death is yet to be determined it has been reported that Raymind was out scuba diving for abalone when he ran into trouble. Roscoe Jacobs, a community activist in Hout Bay, says he and many others who knew him were surprised when they heard Raymind had been out diving when he went missing. As a manager of a bar at the Hout Bay Market, Raymind had been earning a steady income. That was until the national lockdown cost him his job. Raymind’s girlfriend, Luney Phillips (24) says the pandemic put a lot of strain on him. “In the past few months, he was in such a space, only me and him knew what space he was in. He went from having a weekend job, a good salary, to all of a sudden not having that.” Phillips says Raymind used to dive back in the day and that he was a good swimmer who loved the water. But, she says, she was worried when she heard he was diving again. “About three and a half weeks ago, I said to him that I am not happy with that but he told me he was in good hands.” She says she can’t blame Raymind for what happened. “I remember
thinking on Sunday (2 August), when they said he had gone missing, that I knew why he had to do it, because of the space he was in. It was illegal, but you have to do what you have to do.” Jacobs says that even before the lockdown, the Hangberg community faced a high rate of unemployment, poverty and inequality. He says Covid-19 has exasperated these harsh realities. “One can’t blame the youth for deciding to go and dive for abalone illegally because there is no alternative,” says Jacobs. He says young people are being forced to be part of the “negative economy”. “The only way in which this can be turned around is if we have programmes through which young people can capacitate themselves so that they have skills that they can make use of.” Jacobs says, having both grown up in Hangberg, he and Raymind would often see each other around the neighbourhood. “I used to watch him play football but our paths crossed on a more personal level when his late mother Janina Samuels was criminalised by the City of Cape Town for housing herself,” he explains. People’s Post previously reported on the case (“Hangberg land battle rages on”, 30 July 2013). At the time, Janina and the then 16-year-old Raymind were living in a wendy house (situated below the sloot in Hangberg) which was supposed to have been demolished 10 days earlier. On 7 June 2013, Janina had been found guilty of contempt of court because she had failed to comply to an earlier High Court order to demolish the structure. The sentence included a three-month jail term, with the condition that it would be suspended should the dwelling be demolished by 20 July 2013. The court battle that ensued eventually resulted in her spending time in jail. Janina passed away about four years ago. Phillips says Raymind was greatly affected
by his mom’s death. She says he often used to talk about all of his mom’s dreams for the patch of land “which she literally went to jail for”. Of how she said she would one day like to sit on the balcony of her double-storey home, sipping coffee while enjoying the view. “The house that is currently there is the one he built up from the ground. These past few months, he was finishing it. He felt that he owed that to his mom – a balcony and a deck. He had put up a set time to finish it. That is why he wanted it; why he felt he had such a lot of things he had to do but that he couldn’t because of Covid-19.” Raymind was well-loved in the Hangberg community. Phillips says he grew up with the ball and after he finished playing for Hout Bay High School’s soccer team he continued to play for the odd local club. A broken leg put a stop to his participation in the sport for a while but she says he was just starting to return to the soccer field when the lockdown took effect. She says when he had time he would also play with the younger children in the local park to help them improve their skills. “He said it was the best that he could do to help the smaller boys,” Phillips adds. She describes him as the type of person who would walk into a room and light up everyone’s life. “If we walked from where I stayed to where he stayed, he would greet the whole community. Sometimes I would find that frustrating, but that was the kind of guy he was – he would stop at every street corner.” The “high school sweethearts” again connected last year. Phillips says the lessons that she learnt from him in their months together will stay with her for the rest of her life. “There was never a dull moment with him and he was so supportive. He used to say, “where there is a will, there is a way”. He also loved to say to me: “Stick with me, we will be millionaires.”
This is the last photo Raymind Samuels’s girlfriend, Luney Phillips, took of him, before his death. Raymind’s body was recovered on Thursday 6 August after he had gone missing while scuba diving four days earlier.