Refugee boxer haunted by dreams of gold in a Hillbrow gym

His shoelace is almost broken. It's 6am, and Patrick Mavoungou cautiously laces up his battered pair of sneakers. He's sitting on a bench next to the outdoor ring of the Hillbrow Boxing Club.

He's sweating heavily in his black vest. He started training a few hours ago.

Mavoungou raises his head, revealing a deeply lined face. He smiles and says, in French: "I'm not like the other boxers in there. Those guys - they don't know anything about boxing."

He plunges a hand inside his torn backpack. "Look at this. It's me at the at the 2009 African Amateur Boxing Championships," he says, proudly tapping a photograph of a young, fit and determined figure. It would be hard to recognise him. "This was taken a few years ago in Gabon, where I'm from. I used to be a champion." Then he corrects himself: "I mean almost a champion."

Suddenly Mavoungou has no time to talk about the past. "I have to start running. I'll be back in a hour, and then I'll tell you what happened to me."

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Six years ago, Mavoungou was one of the best light heavyweights on the continent. In Mauritius, he won silver at the 2009 African amateur boxing championships, and did it again in 2011 in Yaoundé, Cameroon.

Now 36, he is haunted by those two defeats. He would rather define himself as the "first African boxer among the losers".

Back from his run, he rushes to a punching bag in a corner of the club. No time to waste. He starts punching. Straight right. Left uppercut. The whole club is gawking at him. He hits furiously. The bag swings upward and back on him. One step aside, he avoids it. Left. Right.

Drops of sweat spatter the floor. After a few minutes, Mavoungou staggers and stops punching. The bag slows to stillness. He puts a gloved hand on the wall, recovering his breath, exhausted.

"The problem is that I do not eat," he explains, between two sharp breaths. "I'm waiting for my refugee papers. Then I can find a job. Then I can eat."

Mavoungou arrived in Joburg in 2014 because he heard he could make more money by boxing there. "As soon as I get my papers, it will be good," he says.

Until then, he stays in Yeoville - but refuses to tell me where. "It's not a house," he says. Then he admits he begs on the streets of Hillbrow to afford a meal.

"And then I will go to the Rasta house, it's nice, there are people around and they play music, it relaxes me."

He sleeps mostly by day. "I prefer training at night - I wake up around 3am and I start running. Sometimes I run to the airport and come back."

He casts a disdainful look at the other boxers. "Those guys, they all think they are going to become a champion, just like this. But do you think Mike Tyson and Muhammad Ali used to sleep at night? No, they trained. And so do I."

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Suddenly George Khosi, his trainer, arrives and barks at him. "You talk too much! Go outside and train."

Next to the ring, Mavoungou punches Khosi's padded hands, repeating the same combinations. After a few minutes, he returns to his bench.

"Hey, come over here! I'm gonna show you something," he yells at a teenager starting his training with Khosi. He wants to show the kid his old pictures. Again. But Khosi intervenes and grabs the pictures.

He knows Mavoungou is obsessed with the past - and a little paranoid about his career in Gabon. "I was supposed to go to the Olympics in 2008. We were 11 Gabonese boxers in Windhoek for the qualifying tournament. I did well that day. But the Gabonese federation has always undermined me. They did not take me to Beijing."

A few seconds of silence and he goes back inside to pummel the bag some more.

When he's done, I ask about his plans.

"I want to train and go back to the African amateur boxing championship. I have been silver medal twice but I want my belt. Then I will retire and start coaching the young kids."

But he doesn't want to talk anymore. He's in a hurry. Before resuming his sparring, he says what sounds like a mantra.

"I need to keep punching. I could not do anything else. This is the only thing I can do."