The Pavement Bookworm: A story of triumph amid adversity

Throughout life we equip ourselves with different tools to deal with the challenges that we may encounter along the way. For one man, this mode of escapism is and has always been books and words. A love affair that started at the age of 11.

Philani Dladla, who has written his autobiography, The Pavement Bookworm, was given his first book at the age of 11, for his birthday.

The gift, his first-ever birthday present, came from Joseph Castyline – an elderly man whom his mother worked for as a caregiver in his home-town of Port Shepstone, KwaZulu-Natal.

“This [getting a birthday present] was just an exception; that on my 11th birthday that guy gave me a book titled The Last White Parliament by Frederik van Zyl Slabbert. He gave me that book and promised me that if I was able to read it, and tell him what the book was about, he was going to give me more books,” Dladla tells Daily Maverick.

Castyline died a year after that. But, true to his word, he left to Dladla his entire collection of books, in the region of 500. Dladla says the bounty included the work of authors such as Emily Bronte, Charles Dickens, Friedrich Nietzsche, Zakes Mda and Bantu Steve Biko.

From that point on though, instead of things getting better for Dladla – whose single mother had done all in her power to ensure that her boy had the best life possible – they spiralled out of control.

Through this he was able to afford a place to stay. Soon after, he became hooked on drugs. He experimented with crack and tik (crystal meth).

In high school, in order to fit in, he started moving around with the wrong friends. He was expelled from school and at the age of 16 was sent to a Further Education and Training college to take up a vocational course. But this only exacerbated his unruly behaviour.

“I wanted to impress my friends. I started smoking weed, drinking and bunking class. Thinking about it now, it was pure stupidity because when I was in trouble I was alone,” he says.

After he attempted, on a number of occasions, to commit suicide, Dladla’s mother decided a change of scenery might do him good. She sent him to Johannesburg in 2008, to stay with a friend of hers and look for a job.

But even in this new environment, new threats lurked in the wayside, ready to ambush him. And unfortunately, they succeeded.

Things started off well enough.

Dladla got a job working at a restaurant at the Market Theatre. His employers helped pay for his fees for a course in nursing. Soon after, he left the restaurant and started working at the Johannesburg Association for the Aged as a careworker.

Through this he was able to afford a place to stay. Soon after, he became hooked on drugs. He experimented with crack and tik (crystal meth).

“I won’t blame it on that I was young or anything. It was just my curiosity. I wanted to know how it felt like to be high,” says the author.

In 2011, he found himself on the streets after failing to pay the rent, after he had lost his job for arriving high or not pitching up at all. With nothing but a few clothing items and his valuable book collection, he found shelter under the Nelson Mandela Bridge in Braamfontein.

He sought refuge at the bridge because he had seen many homeless people living there. He was welcomed but told to pay “rent” if he wanted to stay. This he did by giving up some of his clothes to the residents. But he kept his book collection.

While he was settling in, he observed that everyone on that street had their own modus operandi for making money to support their drug habit, and decided that his one would be books.

At first, he started doing book reviews on Empire Road, at the traffic light opposite the entrance of Wits University and getting paid for his charismatic character. He did not sell the books because of sentimental value – merely spoke about them. But eventually, he was open to leasing them out. 

As he became a familiar face in the area, people, especially students at Wits, started giving him books, including their old textbooks, to sell. 

With his hustle now even more profitable, he feared that having money would push him to relapse, and so he started a “soup kitchen”. He bought instant soup packs and bread to give to the homeless people he lived with under the bridge.

“I started the soup kitchen for selfish reasons, not because I wanted to do good. I did it because I didn’t want to have any money. If I didn’t have money lying around at least I wouldn’t think about drugs, because addiction is hard. Especially if you crave drugs and you have money in your pocket,” Dladla states. 

He gained public attention in 2013, when filmmaker Tebogo Malope interviewed him about his roadside bookstall and posted