Meet David Barber: Joburg’s narco warrior

David Barber’s life mission is to change the world, one recovery at a time. Walking With Winners, his rehabilitation facility at the edge of Johannesburg’s deep south, is for people who have become addicted to anything from drugs to gambling and sex.

Walking with Winners is situated on a plot, it’s a welcoming environment where recovering residents participate in every aspect of daily life at the facility. It’s a men’s facility and, in many ways, it feels like a spiritual retreat more than a centre built to heal addiction.

Barber, or Pastor Dave, is an imposing figure. Sleeve tattoos, built like a bouncer, but gentle, kind. He speaks with passion and conviction and will go to the ends of the earth for people. He has been generously blessed with empathy.

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And he’s been there, done that. Several times. Barber’s life in rehabilitation, fighting his own demons of addiction, amounted to a cumulative seven years between his 20s and 30s.

It was a life of crime where he lost himself completely. As a police officer in the late ’80s and early ’90s, his sense of social justice ironically led him into temptation.

Barber was stationed in Hillbrow during a time when the already cosmopolitan, densely populated central Joburg suburb began to attract criminal elements. It was just before and after scrapping apartheid before everyone could vote.

“The things I saw and experienced I will never forget,” he said about his time in uniform.

“You’re 20 years old, and you’re running around Hillbrow with a badge and a gun. You pretty much had licence to shoot and kill under the Schedule One Criminal Offences Act,” he shared.

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“Even if someone just stole a car radio, chances are you’re going to die for it. We were literally children waving guns around with impunity. And there was no psychological debriefing, no assistance for any of the trauma that you go through.”

He said that his conscience knocked hard at life’s door. Barber became the guy in the force who was ostracised for developing friendships with people of colour, who preferred spending time with his friends and their families in the kasi than downing beers with fellow officers in the police barracks.

“I was called names like (k-word) boetie, sometimes isolated and always overlooked for promotion,” he said.

But some of his friends were connected to unsavoury characters. Drugs came into his life. Partaking in and eventually becoming addicted to crack cocaine was his escape, but it also led him down a path of self-destruction.

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While still in service, Barber said he actively worked against his colleagues, aided and abetted crime and served time in prison for faking an armed robbery to steal police funds. His career in the police ended.

A life of crime, living on the streets ensued. Barber eventually, when he hit rock bottom for the first time, approached the notorious Noupoort rehabilitation facility in northern Gauteng.

Its military style discipline worked for him while he was inside. But the demons of addiction resurfaced several times over. And each time he returned to Noupoort. And in each instance, he came clean.

Then the dirt biking community staged an intervention. Barber is a keen biker and has friends in that community.

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Together with his wife, who had stood by Barber through thick and thin, riders sat him down and gave him a last chance to come clean. Or everyone would walk away from him.

To make a long story shorter, he came clean, and settled on a plot near Noupoort with his wife. Barber’s calling became apparent when addicts and escapees from the facility started knocking at his door, looking for care and empathy, a place to stay, and a chance to clean up their own lives.

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Fifteen years ago, he founded Walking With Winners. The current premises in De Deur in southern Gauteng, houses around 40 men, some of whom have been there for several years. Barber does not believe in the popular Minnesota model that says it only takes 28 days to clean up a life.

This sense of purpose sets Barber apart. Every person that walks out of the centre as a winner over their own demons and cravings is a battle won, with Barber leading the charge, armed with kindness.