Being a child of a politician was not easy, Roy Padayachie’s daughter Trevana Moodley, told mourners in a poignant tribute to her minister of public service and administration father on Wednesday.
She said that while growing up she and her older sister Vindea Padayachie, had shared their father with the ANC, SA’s citizens and the international community.
Their Mariannhill home was a “second ANC base”, she told politicians, relatives and friends who had descended on Sahara Kingsmead stadium to bid her father farewell.
“There were many occasions where we wouldn’t see my dad, or he would come back home late from his political commitments,” she said, fighting back tears.
“My father’s biggest regret was that he didn’t spend enough time with his family,” she said.
Padayachie, 62, died in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, while attending the AU’s African Peer Review Mechanism meeting at the weekend.
Politics, said Moodley, was engraved in Padayachie’s life and mind from a very young age.
“My father was a brilliant, dedicated and hard-working man who gave his life to the Struggle. He believed that things should be done properly or they shouldn’t be done at all,” she said.
While her father’s passing still felt surreal, the family was coping, Moodley said, before adding: “Our house and family will never be the same without you, Daddy.”
Speaker after speaker, including Home Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, KZN Premier Zweli Mkhize and Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan, described Padayachie as a man of few words and more action.
Other dignitaries who attended Padayachie’s funeral included Higher Education Minister and SACP general secretary Blade Nzimande, ANC chairwoman Baleka Mbete, IFP leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi, and DA provincial leader Senzo Mchunu, as well as foreign ministers.
Heaping praises on the sterling work Padayachie had done while serving in the cabinet, President Jacob Zuma said Padayachie had championed good governance.
Describing him as a gallant freedom fighter, Zuma said Padayachie “was a friend, a brother and a comrade that I could depend on”.
Padayachie was cremated at Clare Estate Crematorium. - Daily News