President Zuma is saddened by the passing of Minister Padayachie

05 May 2012

President Jacob Zuma wishes to announce with regret the tragic and untimely passing of Minister of Public Service and Administration, Mr Roy Padayachie, who passed on in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where he was attending the APRM meeting of the Select Committee of Focal Points.

"On behalf of myself, the Cabinet, Government and the people of South Africa, I would like to express our inner most sense of loss and despair at the passing of Minister Padayachie. I know no life of his spent outside the pursuit of the goal of a democratic, free, united and prosperous South Africa. It is sadly a great measure of his dedication and personality that he was to meet his destiny and fate in pursuance of a better Africa and a better world, a goal he dedicated his entire life for it to be realised and achieved. No amount of words can express this loss that the Government and people of South Africa feel at this loss", said President Zuma.

Minister Radhakrishna Lutchmana "Roy" Padayachie, has served the country and the governing African National Congress (ANC) for many years. He was born on the 1st of May 1950 and joined the ANC in 1972. A Microbiologist at Reckitt and Colman from 1976 - 1979, he also worked as Research chemist at Shell Chemical (1979 - 1980), while working underground as an ANC operative. He was a Trustee of the Transitional National Development Trust (TNDT) serving on its Audit and Finance Committees and its Policy Advisory Group for the establishment of the National Development Agency (NDA).

He served as Executive Member of the Natal Indian Congress and Executive Committee member of the United Democratic Front in KwaZulu-Natal. He was later to distinguish himself as a Member of ANC KwaZulu-Natal negotiating Team at Congress for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA). A business consultant, he strove to champion the small, medium and micro enterprises until he was appointed Deputy Minister of Communications of the Republic of South Africa in April 2004 and Deputy Minister of Public Service and Administration in 2010.

"We have lost a worker, an academic, a cadre and a soldier for a better South Africa, may his family be consoled by the work he has done for the coutry and its people," said the President.

Statement issued by Mac Maharaj, The Presidency, May 5 2012

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