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In Loving Memory Of Kevin Michael Humphrey 

Kevin and I grew up together in Durban. He was actually my brother Tony's friend and as determined non-conformists at one of those all-boys schools rooted in sport, corporal punishment and tradition they naturally stuck together. In fact, they were such good friends that they were expelled from school together. 

Kevin and Tony were about eight years older than me, so I was always the little brother. They spent a lot of time in a room that my brother had colonised in the backyard of my mother's house. There, with the sound of soft Durban rain pattering on tropical leaves and avocado pears crashing down onto the roof, Tony and Kevin, along with some other dodgy Durban characters, did all the stuff that long-haired hippies in the 1960s did. Many of you might be surprised to know that Kevin had an impressive head of hair then and they sat around burning incense and listening to Janis Joplin and Frank Zappa records amid a cloud of smoke. I used to sneak into the room to join in these festivities but there used to come a point in the evening when they used to say: "Christian, it's time to go off to bed." 

Later on, when I finished school, I was caught in the vicious web of national service. I was called up to the navy and was shipped off to the harsh environment of Saldanha Bay for basic training. By that time Kevin was living in Cape Town and when I was given the weekend off I would flee to Kevin's cramped house in Gardens where I slept in a damp basement. These weekends with Kevin and his eccentric group of friends were a complete contrast to my life at the Saldanha base where I spent my time running up and down sand dunes in boiling heat while being abused and humiliated by sadistic Afrikaans men. And those breaks really saved my sanity. 

I went on to study journalism in Durban and then had to move to Joburg in search of employment. Once again it was Kevin who took me in by giving me a place to stay at his rundown rented house in Mayfair. The house had a flat roof with a view of the city and we would spend hours up there playing one bounce football and of course talking with a diverse range of people including activists, anarchists, addicts, musicians, artists, layabouts and hangers-on. As a privileged white boy from Durban, it was truly an eye-opening time that educated me in how the majority of people in South Africa lived, the viciousness of the police state and the increasingly violent fight against apartheid. 

We were very poor, our house was freezing and the general feeling in Johannesburg was one of fear and violence, but somehow, we managed to have a lot of fun as well. If you look at pictures of Kevin, there is always that gleam of naughtiness and humour in his eyes, so sharing a house with him was always going to be an amusing adventure. 

In recent years, Kevin and I have had regular lunch dates where we would eat curry, drink beer, and talk about old times. He would speak fondly about the time he spent at my mother's house in Durban. My mother loved Kevin, but she always maintained that he was what parents like to call a bad influence on me. 

But I will always be grateful for the huge role he played in my life over so many years. Our other great friend Stephen Rothenburg passed away a couple of years ago. He was also a great talker, although a lot of the stories he told were complete lies. Wherever Steve and Kevin are, I hope that they can meet up and spend many happy hours together talking. rubbish like we used to do in the old days 

Credit: Christian Stephen 

'Farewell Poem' 

'Bury me by the South Beach front' 

Bury me by the South Beach front 

Where I had my first contact with the sea 

My grave should be the tourist attraction. 

To recapture my past picnic days, 

When I used to swim and catch the waves, 

My spirit will float and sail to faraway places I had wished to visit, 

When I had no opportunity to travel. 

To dwell with the swimmers and lifesavers, 

And be in communion with the soul of the sailors 

Who rests under blue waters. Who knows the lyric of the sea song, 

Maybe my bones will dance with the waves, 

And sing along with the chorus of the universe. 

By Siphiwe Zulu 

Credit: Joanne Bloch found this poem at the BAT Centre in Durban, KwaZulu. 

'A memoir of Kevin (1972-1983)' 

When old friends pass on, memories come flooding back, and mutual friends that we haven’t seen for ages are once again in mind. 

When I got to Durban varsity in the early ‘70s, Kevin and his crew were the hippest dudes on campus. Kevin was the first white guy I’d ever seen with dreadlocks. His jeans were adorned with a montage of colourful patches, crafted by his beautiful girlfriend Jaqui. Even though he was only six weeks older than me, he was years ahead when it came to post-Woodstock music and the international counterculture movement. He hung out with Mark Newman, a movie buff who dressed like Jean-Luc Goddard, and other cool cats. I sucked it all up like a vacuum cleaner and Kevin and I became close friends. 

In 1978 I moved to Jo’burg to join Mike Kirkwood at the newly-established publishing house, Ravan Press. Meanwhile Kevin was working and learning in Cape Town at Hirt & Carter, the country’s leading graphic reproduction company. 

Ravan was desperately in need of professional book production skills, so Kevin and I concocted a plan to get him to Jo’burg. Mike agreed to set us up as a semi-independent graphic design agency in the same corridor as Ravan Press. We called our outfit The Graphic Equalizer. Also in that corridor were Dennis Becket’s Frontline magazine and Tony Sutton and Kerry Swift’s Freelance Editors. Alongside our in-corridor clients, we provided design and illustration skills to the so-called ‘Alternative Press’. These were politically oriented educational magazines financed by international anti-apartheid funders. Alongside them were other outfits like Shifty Records, and SASO, the South African Students Organisation. 

 Kevin was close friends with a gifted young artist and photographer at the Michaelis School of Fine Art who had just moved to Jo’burg to take up a post at the Jo’burg Art Gallery, whom he thought I should meet. “What’s her name?” I asked him. “Belinda” he said. 

Kevin arranged for Belinda and I to meet at a party in Crown Mines. It didn’t take long for me to fall for her. Kevin warned me that she was a very sweet person and I’d better behave myself. Not long after that, I moved into her flat in Yeoville. A year later we had two weddings – a court wedding in Jo’burg and a Greek wedding in East London, where Kevin and Jaqui were our Best Man and Best Woman. That’s the last time I remember seeing her. 

Meanwhile, I had left the Graphic Equalizer and Kevin was running the show. He had a dedicated crew around him, as well as ex-Sached illustrator Muziwakhe Nhlabatsi and Weekly Mail calendar artist Caroline Cullinan. I was now at the Sached Trust, working as assistant editor and illustrator on a teen magazine called UpBeat. 

In 1983, our first son, Christopher, was born. It was time to move to Durban, my home town. Soon after our move, Kevin told me over the phone about an interesting young woman who had just joined UpBeat. “What’s her name, I asked. “Joanne,” he said. 

Reflecting on that decade, it’s amazing how important it turned out to be. How interwoven our lives were, and how fortunate we were to participate as writers, editors, artists, photographers, activists, lovers and friends. And how our personal stories fit together into a coherent collective narrative. It’s a story that deserves be told, so that our kids and grandkids can gain insight into the transition we’ve lived through. 

 Belinda told me, as I was writing this, that she’d had a close personal WhatsApp correspondence with Kevin in the last year of his life. It started in late 2024 at a time that they were both recovering from serious operations. Their close friendship from varsity days was rekindled, and they talked about the possibility of Kevin coming back to Cape Town. But it never happened. There are many other stories that connect directly and intimately with this one. I’d personally like to know more about the decades that followed the one I’ve just described. I’m sure all of us are thinking about these things at the moment. Kevin’s legacy to us all may well be to take us back into a story in which we’ve all have had a role to play. 

Credit: Andy Mason Thursday 5 Feb 2026 

'Short eulogy from old friends in Cape Town' 

I can hear Kevin Humphries muttering Mark Twain’s sardonic warning about “lies, damn lies and statistics" as we packed the Land Rover and trailer for our gutsy —"Ons skrik for niks" road trip, a late 1970's road trip while we solved resettlement, in 16mm nog-al. In a way, it was a statistic that got Kevin—at his age, he was not meant to die. I remember him splashing mud on our number plates, playfully, like, trying to deceive the special branch cops at Elukhanyisweni. It worked, and we bumped into Maseru to make a call to Nupen. 

In our opinion, cops were a few nuts short of a squirrel—or, we were being played for our contacts. So Kev, so long 'oh lucky man'—lucky man? Yeah why not "an inflammatory class-war allegory about teenage revolutionaries staging an armed insurrection against oppressive authority?" Abaphuciwe—the Dispossessed. 16mm, 52 mins colour 1980. 

Credit Team: Gavin Younge, Amanda Younge, Chris Thomas, Molefe Pheto, Luke Younge, Kevin Humphrey RIP , Jacqui Nolte. 

Obituary In Loving Memory of Kevin Michael Humphrey 

19.06.1954 - 30.01.2026 

Kevin was a warm, friendly and kind person with a great sense of humour. He was a very proud father, who always supported and encouraged his children, and taught them to take pride in their work and be kind to others. 

Kevin was very knowledgeable about film and loved music and reading. He was also always ready to share ideas, discuss anything and everything and tell wonderful and often funny stories about his life. 

Kevin was a democrat who believed passionately in equality and human rights. Many will remember his valuable role as a cultural activist in the anti-apartheid struggle during the 70s and 80s. In 1988, Kevin had to leave the country to avoid being called as a state witness after his design studio, the Graphic Equaliser, was raided by the security police. He returned in 1991, eager to contribute to the new democratic South Africa. He subsequently made his mark in several different arenas, including at the AIDS Directorate of the Gauteng Health Department in the late 90s and early 2000s. 

Rest in peace Kevin. 

We will always remember you. 

'Kevin Michael Humphrey Eulogy by Mark Newman' 

When I started at the University of Natal in Durban in 1972, I was an 18-year-old mixed bag of rugger bugger and beach boy with a strong interest in theatre and literature, and a burgeoning political consciousness. Deeply naive but a seeker a 60’s/70’s kid looking for answers. I was by no means unique but, looking around at my fellow students, I felt quite out of place. The outsider, moving rapidly away from my beach/sporting/standard white South African privileged youth identity but not yet part of anything: not the 'top table in crowd', nor the politicos, nor the hippies, nor the studious nerds nor any other group. As we would say today: 'I was looking for my people' 

Then one day in the Speech and Drama modern dance class I noticed this guy who seemed as much out of place as me. In fact, way more than me. He had this enormous head of hair as close to an Afro as a white boy's hair could get. Wow. And more than that, he was much more ungainly with the dance moves than I was. 

I saw him again at a distance in English and then in the Politics lecture (our lecturer was Rick Turner). Afterwards our paths crossed and he came up to me, a smile on his face friendly, open and greeted me. "Hello". Not "Howzit" or even "Hi". He spoke with an accent that was different from mine and those about us an English accent, signalling his earlier years in the UK. But it was more his tone that was so remarkable. It had a richness and warmth and was laced with a unique humour; it was a voice that, young as he was (we both were), gave him an air of wisdom, of being a man of the world. 

Frankly, I didn't quite know how to take him. And why would he befriend me? Why me? But he did and thus began a friendship which lasted from then until now. I watched and I listened and I learned from him his love for music, for film, for books. He introduced me to Bob Marley and the Wailers who I, like many in those days, had never heard of. He was in touch with trends in art, in style, in graphics in ways that stretched out way beyond Durban, beyond South Africa, beyond the narrow, conservative world we inhabited. How in those pre internet days, I wondered and still wonder could he be so in tune with the world's dynamic youth culture. As we got to know each other, I began to call him" Hump". Everyone in my little world following the English private school norm was given a nickname. Hump seemed to fit him perfectly. On the second or third time I called him that, he looked me in the eye and through pursed lips said: "No! None of that." I was taken aback, but way too scared to try it again. 

Far away in Europe, the year 1974 saw a significant event that was to have major consequences for the whole of Southern African. This was the coup against the Salazar regime in Portugal which, for those less aware of the history, was then the colonial power in both Moçambique and Angola. For us this moment was immense as it altered the power balances across the region, leaving the borders of apartheid suddenly extremely vulnerable. 

At this time Kevin and I were working on Dome, the student newspaper. It's a long story but briefly: we managed to print an edition which focussed on these momentous changes. Rebranded "Doom" the front page carried a cartoon image of a large question mark atop a bomb with a lit fuse. The back cover carried a short article and a map, titled: "Terrorists or Freedom Fighters?" Arrows indicated where the anti-apartheid guerrillas were located at that time and where the new frontiers to be defended from then on. 

To say this got us into a lot of trouble across the university is an understatement. Most vociferous were the engineering students, many of whom were Rhodesians, fresh from their years in the bush war, defending their farms and towns. The student Engineering Society demanded that we present ourselves in person at their meeting to answer for these malicious misrepresentations. Kevin and I were due to front-up, but for some unknown reason it ended-up with just me lending off their insults, slanders and threats of violence. My partner in crime was nowhere to be seen. 

In these years Kevin was with Jacqui, someone who also had a powerful influence on me, completely overturning my ideas of women and their ascribed roles in life. She and Kevin were the sparks igniting stuff in me (and for others, I know). I should mention here Kevin's close friend, Bruce Macmillan, who died some years ago. An odd man (to my memory), a loner, quite on the periphery, but whose friendship, in many ways, characterised Kevin's adherence to another world, to another vision of how society could be. 

He had many such friends, then and later; I’m thinking of Stephen Rothenberg, Trevor Steele Taylor, Joe Shallis, Christian Stephenand Zanele Mashinini. 

After university our lives diverged somewhat. In Jo’burg, where we both had migrated, besides bumping at parties in Yeoville and Mayfair and Crown Mines, were connected at the Graphic Equaliser (what an incredible name, hey?). On my Infrequent visits to the Braamfontein studio offices I witnessed the vibrant and spirited world that Kevin was part of creating. 

Later, when Kevin split the country ahead of bullshit intimidation from the security branch, Robyn and I saw him and Joanne in London. They were in a small flat in Stoke Newington one of those where you put 10p coins in the gas meter to stave off hypothermia. It was soon to be the time when Apartheid saw its gat and we could all escape grey and grisly London to the freedom of the shiny new rainbow version of our country. 

Back home, both our partners Jo and Robyn gave birth to children, named (coincidentally) Georgia and George. 

So began a new era, for us and for the country even if for the latter it turned out somewhat differently from what we had imagined and hoped it would. Our lives also, in so much that followed, changed in ways that we couldn’t have imagined. 

At the end of the 90s, the end of the century, the end of the millennium, Robyn, the kids and I left for a country I swore I would never settle in. I saw Kevin the day before I left at my farewell party and wasn’t to see him again for at least 10 years. During that time and Nomsa produced a marvellous child, Liam. Maybe he will remember me from an afternoon spent with them at Randpark Ridge when he was still at school. 

Again, even though we might not see each other for many months and sometimes years, Kevin was a strong, enduring presence. On the irregular visits I made back home, I saw him once in Randpark Ridge, a number of times in pubs and cafes in Parkhurst and once at his work in Midrand. I never did get the full picture of his life during those years. He wasn’t being evasive; there was just so much to talk about, to follow where our minds led. But I do know it wasn’t all easy. 

The full realization of Kevin's impacts on me came only when we reconnected in these last few years. From the beginning I was drawn to his strength and humour, that spirit in him a spirit of rebellion, of refusal, of the ability to laugh and not be bowed by all that nonsense and shit constantly shovelled down the pipeline at us. He carried an almost other worldly joy even though times were often extremely hard for him. 

In September last year we met a few times at the Cresta Centre (well known to many here). We reminisced about our parallel yet connected lives. Among the many sweet memories we dwelled on the university film society, one of the very few sites of a cultural life in Durban at the time. We both simultaneously remembered the film, Closely Watched Trains, a Czechoslovakian film from the1960s; it seemed to have marked up both profoundly. Talking about it we saw that what had resonated for us both so many years ago was its message of commitment to the good, to love and to a resistance to the shit in the pipeline. 

So, I look at his life and marvel at it. I see the love he had, his values, the qualities of character, the effect he has on others around him. And marvel at my luck at knowing him and having been close to him. I would love to know him more. To spend more time with him, as we all would. But now that's not going to be possible. 

Cheers, Kevin [Overseas]