Trevor was born in the working-class suburb of Kensington in Cape Town in 1956. His mother was a garment worker and his father worked for the city council. His family's experiences encapsulated the racial wrongs perpetrated against Coloureds by the apartheid system. His father's family were old residents of District Six and they lost their home in the great destruction of that historic inner city area in the late 1960s by the apartheid government. His mother's relatives had lived in the centre of Stellenbosch for three generations. They too were forcibly removed from their home, from where Trevor's great-grandfather and uncle had run a business in the middle of Stellenbosch.