“As I was lying in the street I cried out and asked God to forgive me for my sins. I felt a sense of peace. That’s when I saw an angel at my right hand.”
Mervin Matthys (28), once a hardened gangster and now a second-year Unisa student studying Information Science, recalls the night everything changed, a moment of surrender that transformed his life and left him paralysed from the waist down.
Matthys’ life has been shaped by trauma and heartache from an early age, driving him into a series of destructive choices.
“I was named after my father and the only thing I inherited from him was the violent memories of how he used to abuse my mother. I grew up scared and lonely. But my mother was my support system.”
He says as a 12-year-old he was already experimenting with drugs and had joined a gang.
“It felt like everywhere I went I had a sign on my head that said, ‘bully me’. At school and in the community, children wanted to bully me.
“I had a choice: either allow people to do what they wanted to do with me, or I could stand up for myself. Standing up for myself got me into a lot of trouble.”
Matthys says witnessing what his father did to his mother filled him with anger, and he lashed out at others as a result.
“When I got to high school, the bullies got bigger and were twice my size. I couldn’t fight them. That’s when I joined a gang. Once I went to school with 25 gang members to confront the bully.
“I knew it was wrong, but it felt good because I was getting even. This made me feel better about myself. People would commend me for what I did.”
At 16 he was found guilty of stabbing someone.
“The court sentenced me to a diversion programme where I had to attend anger management classes. I was expelled from school. I could see the disappointment on my mother’s face. My mother did the best she could. I made the wrong decisions on my own.”
Night of shooting
Matthys describes 27 May 2017 as a day he will never forget.
“On this day I could feel death was in the atmosphere. My friend and I left a shebeen and we were walking in the street. It was just after 23:45. I heard a voice telling me to turn around. Almost like God warning me. I turned around and saw four guys approaching. We stood still and one approached us. He walked straight to my friend and pulled out a gun and shot him repeatedly.”
He says he froze for a moment, unsure of what do and then started running.
“I didn’t get far, I could hear the bullets flying past me. I knew at this point that he was shooting at me. I fell face first into the ground. When I wanted to get up, I could not feel my legs.”
He says the perpetrator ran towards him.
“The guy ran towards me and shot me in the chest. I was lying in the street on my back. He came closer leaned over me and pressed his gun directly against my chest and pulled the trigger five times. But nothing came out. All I heard was the sound of the trigger.”
According to Matthys, the gunman then fled leaving him for dead.
“I was just lying there and watched them ran away. I turned to see if my friend was okay, and I knew he was gone. I couldn’t breathe properly.”
In a desperate moment, Matthys says he remembered his mother’s voice telling him about God
“I had a praying mother who would always tell me about God. I never wanted to listen. I asked God to forgive me for my sins. After I prayed I felt at peace and that gave me the energy to shout for help.”
He explains that two people arrived on the scene. However, they were family members of the rival gang and they robbed him and his dead friend.
Matthys tells People’s Post when they left, he started calling for help.
“My mother eventually arrived with a blanket and knelt next to me. She didn’t expect to find me alive. She whispered in my ear that I need to make right with God.”
He had to undergo an emergency operation as most of his major organs were damaged.
“As I was laying in the hospital bed a few days later, I could not deny that it was the hand of God that saved me.”
Matthys says his journey to recovery was challenging as he had to re-learn how to do things for himself.
After a three-year legal battle, the shooter was found guilty and sentenced to 25 years in jail.
Turning point
Matthys said that a few months later, he saw an advertisement for a night school to complete matric and enrolled, driven by a lifelong dream of finishing his education.
He enrolled in night school and graduated at the top of his class as valedictorian.
“I was the only one at the night school that passed with a bachelor’s pass at this night school. I put myself through school and paid with my disability grant. That was my only source of income. There were times when there was no food at home but I still went to class.”
He encourages youth to make better choices, saying gangsterism brings death and tears entire families apart.
He has already completed a National Certificate in Business Administration Services and hopes to become a licensed youth minister and establish a youth centre in his community.
“I would like to teach children how to read and write. I am a better father to my kids than my father was to me. The bad things that happened to me pushed me to be the person that I am today.”
This article was aired on Cape Talk. Listen: https://omny.fm/shows/mid-morning/your-community-news-from-bullets-to-belief-a-second-chance-that-changed-everything
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