Comrade Paddy: A memory, a scar

I have three scars on my right leg, about three centimetres below the knee. They sit close to each other looking like poorly conceived abstract art. The first looks a bit like a triangle, a result of a bad landing when I jumped to hide behind a tree outside our home while playing umacashelane, hide and seek. It was 1963. I was six years old and playing with my siblings. I could not work out whether I had broken the bottle as I landed or if I landed on an already broken bottle. Either way the collision with the bottle ended the hiding as I cried my way to Mama in the kitchen. The wound took a long time to heal. 

I acquired the second scar decades later, as I contorted my way through a barbed wire fence somewhere on the border between South Africa and Swaziland in December 1986. This scar looks like a simple vertical line. 

To its right is a scar that is a horizontal line with faded suture marks that I can never look at without thinking of Comrade Paddy. I do not understand the coincidence that positioned these three scars, all marks of moments in my life, together. While one could argue that the first two were self-inflicted, the third one wasn’t.

I first heard the name Paddy Harper when it dropped from the lips of a comrade, Kevin Qhobosheane. It felt wrong hearing him mention someone’s name in that manner. It was one of those moments when I needed to remind myself that times had changed. We are in a soon-to-be-new South Africa, we no longer have to lie and keep secrets to secure our safety. Kevin is no longer training me for underground skills. We are now equals, comrades and he can mention anyone by name. The year was 1990. I had come back home with seven other women on 8 June  to rebuild the movement.

The second time Kevin mentioned the name Paddy Harper was not long after the first. This time he needed to tell me that Paddy would be coming to Johannesburg, and that he had something to hand over to me. It was October. I lived in a  three-bedroom house shared with two others at number 79 Mitchell Street in Berea. 

Not long afterwards, Paddy phoned, arrived at this home and handed me a very thick file. I offered him something to drink. He said he was in a rush and added that he would be back in Johannesburg soon, for work  and we could go out for dinner, talk and get to know each other. I trusted him to honour his word because Kevin had trusted him to deliver his personal writings to me.

When Paddy called about two weeks later, he gave me a street address in Berea and suggested we meet there at about six. I walked to our rendezvous, and he was there, waiting. He suggested we walk across to Yeoville, to a restaurant. I no longer recall its name.  As we crossed over a bridge above Nugget Street darkness was gracefully enveloping the warm summer atmosphere. Paddy expressed his surprise that I had not opened the file he had delivered. 

“We s’febe ndini, uyolala nomlungu! Ufuna ukubhejwa umlungu?  (You whore, you are going to sleep with a white man! You want to be fucked by a white man?). Loud angry words rushed out from behind us. We were about halfway across the bridge. 

As we looked back, two men — who clearly had been following us and had a plan — grabbed us. The one who had his arms around me told me I am an embarrassment, that he was going to throw me over the bridge because I would be better dead. He started moving his arms around my body as if to carry me like a child. My instantaneous plan after hearing his plan was to do everything I could to end up sitting on the ground. I could see Paddy and his attacker close by, their physical struggle volatile. His attacker was silent while mine was shouting non-stop, insulting me with all the vocabulary he could master. I finally managed to place my bum on the ground while holding firmly on the rails of the bridge. When he realised he would not be able to throw me over the bridge he took out a knife, bent over, stabbed me on my right leg and ran off towards Yeoville. Paddy’s attacker followed.

Paddy stepped towards me and squatted in front of me wordlessly. He quickly took off his shirt, then his T-shirt underneath, replaced his shirt and bent over me, using his T-shirt to stop my bleeding. He used his hands to lift me up, put my right arm over his shoulder and walked me back across the bridge to the Berea side. 

He asked me to wait for him as he disappeared into what looked like a grocery store. In no time he was back, telling me that a Rose taxi was on its way to take us to the Hillbrow hospital. In those years Rose Taxis were driven — and owned — by white people. When the taxi arrived, and the driver noticed I was bleeding he said he was not going to give us a ride. 

Paddy spoke to him in a very low voice. I didn’t hear what he said. Then he walked back to the store and returned with a newspaper. He used part of it to cover the seat and put the other part over my leg and we drove to the hospital. I was given a wheelchair at the front door. Paddy wheeled it through all the stopping points from registration to nurse interviews to doctor examinations to the stitching of the wound. 

I was dropping in and out of consciousness as all of this was unfolding and Paddy took over talking to the hospital staff. When all checking and decision-making were over, I ended up on a bed with a drip. Paddy sat on a chair at the bottom of the bed as midnight approached. I woke up two or three times to turn around and reposition the arm with the drip. Each time, I saw Paddy’s body bent over, his head and arms on the bottom end of the bed, sleeping. 

When the doctor arrived in the morning to check on me, he said I was free to go. When the admin was completed Paddy and I stepped outside of the hospital as I informed him we didn’t need a taxi because I was feeling good and wanted to try to walk home. Paddy made me promise then that whenever I did not feel well, I would let him know so he could call a taxi. I agreed. 

We walked casually without much conversation. I led the way because I was familiar with the terrain, having lived in Hillbrow in June when I first landed in Johannesburg. We parted in front of my shared rented home on Mitchell Street. I thanked Paddy and as we said our goodbyes I took in the fact that my attacker had not grabbed my small handbag. Paddy checked on me in the weeks that followed. 

I didn’t hear from him again until 18 years later, in 2008, when Paddy called at about eight in the morning while I was at breakfast in a hotel in Cape Town. I was there for work. Paddy told me that Kevin had died. Paddy was the first and only person to have informed me of this. I  was not shocked. Kevin had been ill for some time, and I had visited him a few times. I was sad to hear the news though, because I knew I was not going to make it to the funeral as I was about to travel abroad.

“How did you find my number?” I asked Paddy as we said our goodbyes. We had last communicated before cell phones were in our lives. “You forget I’m a journalist,” he said. I remember thinking, what took you so long, when I first happened upon Paddy’s column.

Missing the funeral of someone I know has always felt weird for me. There’s something about mourning with others at a funeral that allows a smooth closure. Paddy’s death feels weird for a different reason. I never met any of his friends, colleagues or family. Aside from Kevin I never met any of his other comrades. This passage through mourning feels like a solitary journey. 

I have lived with Paddy through the scar for 35 years now. This scar that impersonates Comrade Paddy’s care will remain with me till my own end comes.

I’d like to thank Richard Pithouse for suggesting that I write this story and for reading and commenting on the first draft. When I read about Paddy Harper’s death, I needed to talk to someone, anyone. I suspected that Richard had known him, so I initiated a WhatsApp conversation that ended with this piece.   Makhosazana ‘Khosi’ Xaba is an essayist, poet and editor, anthologist, short story writer and an associate professor of practice in the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Johannesburg based at the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study.