President Cyril Ramaphosa has declared that struggle stalwart and Cabinet veteran Pravin Gordhan will be honoured with a Special Official Funeral Category 2 on Thursday, 19 September 2024.
Former Minister Gordhan passed away in the early hours of Friday, 13 September 2024, at the age of 75, following a period of illness.
“On Thursday, 19 September, Gordhan will be honoured with a Special Official Funeral which will encompass ceremonial elements performed by the South African Police Service. Details of this occasion will be made known in the coming days,” said the President’s office on Friday.
The President has also directed that the National Flag be flown at half-mast from Saturday, 14 September 2024, until the evening of the funeral.
Gordhan served as Minister of Finance from 2009 until 2014 and again from 2015 until 2017.
He also served as Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs from 2014 until 2015, and as Minister of Public Enterprises from February 2018 until his March 2024 announcement of planned retirement.
Gordhan was appointed as Commissioner of the South African Revenue Service in 1999, after a period as Deputy Commissioner.
According to the Presidency, his contribution to the public sector arose from his involvement in the anti-apartheid struggle, including his role in student and civic movements in the 1970s and 1980s, as an executive member of the Natal Indian Congress and military operative in the armed wing of the African National Congress.
“President Ramaphosa has offered his deep condolences to Mr Gordhan’s spouse, Ms Vanitha Raju, daughters Anisha and Priyesha, as well as the former Minister’s older brother, Manecklal Gordhan, and sister Shanta Harilal.
“The President’s thoughts are also with the former Minister’s extended family, comrades, associates and organisations with whom he established relationships as a family and community member, freedom fighter, public sector executive and Member of the National Executive,” said the Presidency.
President Ramaphosa, who visited Gordhan in his final hours, has paid tribute to the former Minister as a leader who had fought to liberate South Africa from the shackles of apartheid, from inequality, from poverty and from hunger.
The President said Gordhan had been driven by a vision of a society in which all people may achieve their full potential and in which all may realise their dreams. – SAnews.gov.za
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Fun South African Fact: South Africa is home to the oldest meteor scar in the world – the Vredefort Dome in a town called Parys. The site is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
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The Man who could only Drink Milk
I know an old man who had lived a life full of adventure, but his health started to catch up with him. He\’d run the Boston Marathon, was an avid surfer, and climbed Everest, but he\’d started to have abdominal pains around his 85th birthday and went to see a doctor. Sadly, he ultimately was diagnosed with a rare degenerative liver disease that slowly made him allergic to everything he ate.
He kept copious notes, and as an avid gastronomist slowly grew to despair as everything he\’d spent his life enjoying became something he could no longer eat. Alcohol went first, then mushrooms, then bread, then root vegetables, then coffee, one at a time he had to remove them from his diet. The doctor was clear: if he kept eating something his liver rejected the autoimmune response would be quick and severe, and would lead to a painful death. Little by little, everything was taken away as an option, until the only thing that remained was milk.
In some ways, this actually made life easier, because the mental strain of remembering what he could and couldn\’t eat was gone, but then so was the joy in variety. But he took it in stride, and got his own cow and took classes from a farmer to learn everything he could about the only thing that could give him sustenance. And even within milk, he could still have yogurt, butter, cream, some cheeses, and other milk-derived products he hadn\’t fully rejected yet, so it wasn\’t all bad. But then one day a few months later he felt the pain again, and he knew cow\’s milk was no longer an option.
Lacking other options, he tried goat\’s milk, and he was delighted that it worked! The protein structure is just different enough that his body still tolerated it. That bought him another month. And that\’s when we came up with a wonderful plan to go on one last grand adventure around the world. If he could get one month of life out of the milk of every mammal, he\’d actually have a few more years to enjoy life to the fullest and see the world in all its beauty. Each month, we\’d pick a place with a new mammal, and he would immerse himself fully with the locals, learn all the ways to prepare the milk, and just enjoy the hand he had been dealt as much as he could.
We milked sheep in New Zealand. Camels in Egypt. Zebras in South Africa. Giant bats in Indonesia. Do you know how many Peruvian cuy you need to milk to get a single glass? I do. Even as his health slowly faded, he stayed cheerful, and I felt lucky to join him on the adventure of a lifetime. That brings us to today when he got to the very end of his spreadsheet, and declared that he was now allergic to every mammal. He\’d enjoyed his journey, but his time had come to an end, for there was nothing left to milk.
To which I said nonsense, I bet we can milk a few thousand karma out of this post.