Ramaphosa says he’ll deeply miss his friend Gordhan, calls him the 'quintessential activist'
President Cyril Ramaphosa delivered a eulogy at Gordhan's funeral service at the Inkosi Albert Luthuli International Convention Centre in Durban on Thursday afternoon.
The wife of the late former minister Pravin Gordhan, Vanitha Raju, is comforted by President Cyril Ramaphosa during the state funeral at the Durban International Convention Center on Thursday, 19 September 2024. Picture: Jacques Nelles/Eyewitness News
JOHANNESBURG - President Cyril Ramaphosa said that he would deeply miss Pravin Gordhan, whom he regarded as a close friend.
Ramaphosa delivered a eulogy at Gordhan's funeral service at the Inkosi Albert Luthuli International Convention Centre in Durban on Thursday afternoon.
The president remembered Gordhan as a principled, valuable, and insightful public servant.
IN PICS: Former Minister Pravin Gordhan laid to rest
"I will miss our many discussions over many hours, at my home and offices, on the telephone, conversations that would go late into the night. He was one of those who was always meticulous in his thinking, always well prepared on any topic that one engaged him on."
He said that Gordhan’s legacy would always be honoured.
"The most fitting tribute we can pay Pravin is to reflect on our own actions to consider what we can, and should each do, to serve our people better and our country better, to reflect on what it means to be an activist, for he was the quintessential activist."
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'CALL THEM OINKS'
The late Pravin Gordhan's eldest daughter, Anisha, also shared harrowing accounts of witnessing her father being arrested by apartheid police multiple times during their raids.
Anisha expressed her memories with her father during his funeral service in Durban.
She said that while her childhood wasn’t as normal as that of her peers, her father helped her understand the reasons behind their family's unique circumstances.
"One of my earliest memories was of the security branch police coming to take my father away to detention when I was four years old. As they were taking my father away to detention, he told me to look at the faces of the security branch police and remember these men who were taking my father away. These men, he said, were working against the liberation of this country and he taught me to call them oinks, meaning pigs."
Anisha said that she tried to come to her father’s defence.
"When I was six years old, my father was again detained. We had heard through an inside contact that he was at C.R. Swart prison. At the time, we had one of those telephones with a circular dial. Unbeknownst to the adults in the house, I called CR Swart and asked to speak to the oinks. I told them that I wanted them to bring my daddy home."