Paddy cared deeply about underdogs, and journalistic excellence was intertwined with his extensive community networks. (Delwyn Verasamy/M&G)
“Seeking out the ragged quarters where the ragged people go. Looking for the places only they would know.”
My eldest son, Christian, suggested that these lines from a Paul Simon song summed up his good friend Paddy Harper well, and this tribute is from us.
He and Paddy, and Paddy’s like-minded sister Bella, were part of a wider group of white, counter-apartheid culture youths in Durban who rejected everything that system stood for.
They stood their ground against their white majority critics who, brainwashed by the government’s Total Strategy of the 1980s, disapproved of their outlook and lifestyle.
That included drinking together with Sipho Khumalo and Fred Khumalo at Durban’s Dalton hostel, a ready source of beers when bottle stores were closed.
Their music scene included Syd Kitchen and icon Steve Fataar, and the Plagal Cadence threesome comprising Nibs van der Spuy, Peter Hall and Christian (Fuzzy to friends), which played their own compositions, reflective of prevailing social issues and their own values (including Trucking Up the Mountain, when Splashy Fen became an annual music festival).
It was through this filial friendship that I first met Paddy, as one of many youthful visitors to our home, 40 years ago.
He was then a junior journalist with our conservative morning newspaper, in a political climate of increasing repression.
Across the generation gap, that was the start of what became a close working relationship in sharing information about the events around us — including photographs he took of gatherings of armed vigilantes.
That created a bond between us that very few white people shared because we were among a small minority of them who knew, first hand, what was happening in black townships around Durban in the 1980s — and that it was not “black-on-black unrest”.
At that time I reflected in an academic article about the different social constructions of reality in South Africa, and the gulf in understandings of our situation those of us with black friends and colleagues, who went to townships and shack settlements, compared with the vast majority of white people who lived in a completely different world.
I could guess what Paddy would have gone through working for a newspaper aimed at white readers, as I fought a battle with, among others, journalists and editors who, with notable exceptions (Sunday Tribune editor Ian Wylie and Cyril Madlala of Umafrika for example) did not believe me. (One editor told me his readers did not want to know more about the violence.)
The media also had to tread carefully when States of Emergency limited access to information — and to avoid the wrath of a litigious political leader who claimed reports of violence by his supporters constituted defamation. I recall Paddy’s exasperation at having to check that the word “allegedly” was not omitted in reports.
When Roy Ainslie became regional director of the Progressive Federal Party in the province during those fraught times, he started a small monitoring group that also fed information to Paddy and other journalists.
But publication was often an uphill battle (which is why I started compiling and disseminating reports on what was known about the violence).
The information exchanges between Paddy and I continued from those repressive 1980s days until his death. Paddy cared deeply about underdogs, and journalistic excellence was intertwined with his extensive community networks, which provided him with excellent sources.
With the unbanning of the ANC and funding and support, Paddy drove a new publication called The New African, which gave excellent coverage of the struggles and violence in what became KwaZulu-Natal.
Sadly, the funding was fairly short-lived. (I, for one, lobbied overseas funders, pointing out the importance of maintaining independent media, but without success.)
Paddy went on to work for other news houses, and had been entrenched at the Mail & Guardian for years before his untimely death.
From the beginning of his career, Paddy worked closely with trade unionists and leading United Democratic Front figures, which extended to politicians destined to play key roles in post-1994 politics.
But he did not waver in maintaining a critical and independent approach in his reports on politicians (and private conversations revealed how quickly he had become disillusioned with many of the former comrades).
Paddy was a shining example of the best of humanity. Seemingly disinterested in the pursuit of wealth, he was always on the side of the downtrodden, unafraid of showing contempt for those who abused their fellow human beings and impervious to their criticism.
He was never afraid to speak out about injustice — and he continued to do so until his last breath.
Mary de Haas is an academic researcher and activist for political and human rights, human dignity and social justice.