South African cabinet minister Roy Padayachie died in Ethiopia on Friday evening, government spokesman Jimmy Manyi has announced.
“The minister died of natural causes,” Manyi said.
Aged 62, he had been minister of public service and administration since October 2011, and he had been a member of the ANC since 1972.
Padayachie was attending a meeting of the African Peer Review Mechanism in Addis Ababa.
The two-day meeting Padayachie was attending is a high level discussion between ministers and top government officials who report directly to their respective heads of state.
Padayachie was part of the APR focal point select committee. On the agenda was a discussion on integrating the mechanism into the African Union. -Sapa