Mr Speaker and hon members, "Do you know what is more hard to bear than the reverses of fortune?" This is a question once asked by Napoleon Bonaparte, and he actually answered it himself by saying: "It is the baseness, the hideous ingratitude, of man."
I have to make quite sure that the UDM family, on whose behalf I undertake the sad duty of bidding farewell to its former Deputy President and a former Member of Parliament, the late hon Ntopile Kganyago, is not accused of ingratitude here today by saying thank you very much to the Kganyago family for the time it shared the late Mr Kganyago with us. In fact, words seem inadequate to express our gratitude and condolence to you.
Today we are bidding farewell to one of the founding fathers of the UDM, a leader and a principled man, who had a strong dislike for the practice of fiddling with the public purse for self-enrichment.
President Holomisa recently paid tribute to Mr Kganyago or "Prof," as we affectionately knew him, for his indelible legacy in the UDM with these words, and I quote:
Prof helped to establish the UDM at a time when the political situation was volatile and it was considered taboo to form and join a new political party in South Africa. He took this risk despite the notoriety of the UDM for its strong stance against corruption.
We salute Prof for taking this bold decision. Prof was a unifier who always spoke about the importance of banding together to serve one another in building a strong UDM, capable of making a meaningful contribution in society.
He believed that the more tolerance one fostered in an organization, the better it would be for its people and society in general. Born in 1940, Prof obtained his BA degree at the University of South Africa in 1974. Several years later, he obtained a B Ed degree from the University of the North. In 1989, he completed a Master's Degree at the University of Delaware in the United States of America.
As already indicated earlier, Prof worked for many years as an educator and school inspector, and as Head of Psychological Services of the Department of Education. He served South Africans as a UDM municipal councillor in Polokwane for four years. After this he was a member of the Limpopo Provincial Legislature until he became a Member of Parliament in 2004.
He often personally told me how he could not believe the trust placed in him, an ordinary man from Seshego in Limpopo, when he was appointed as Deputy Minister of Public Works in the 2004-09 term.
At the time of his death, Prof was the chairperson of the UDM Limpopo Province and our deputy president. Here in Parliament, he served on the Portfolio Committees on Basic Education, on Intelligence and Social Services. In all these positions, Prof went beyond the call of duty.
I had the honour and privilege of working very closely with Prof during his constituency work in Limpopo and here in Parliament. To him, all engagements and interactions with communities were a critical way of ensuring a constant flow of information between him, as a public representative, and the people. He thoroughly enjoyed being directly accountable to the people.
During community meetings, Prof would diligently jot down all the service delivery concerns and complaints of the people and would not rest until they had been escalated to the relevant departments.
Although he was a strict disciplinarian with a fetish for order and decorum, he was always patient with those who came to meetings inebriated and in a state where they were unable to contribute meaningfully to discussions.
I fondly remember one Saturday morning, early last year, when Prof and I drove for more than 200 km from Polokwane to attend a community meeting at a small village in Thohoyandou. He undertook this trip despite walking slowly and with difficulty because of the pain he felt in his right leg.
Another similar show of commitment was in June this year, when I called him to discuss a potential press statement that I wanted to issue for him. However, after realising that he was sick, I took an about-turn. I told him that he did not sound well and was therefore not in a position to do media interviews.
Sick as he was, Prof insisted that I issue the statement, because to him nothing mattered more than discharging his constitutional duties. I promised to come back to him with a draft, but I never did, precisely because I believed that he had to focus on his health. Two weeks later, Prof was no more.
Prof was an untiring campaigner for service delivery and human rights, who set seemingly insurmountable standards for us, the younger generation. In fact, his selfless leadership reminded me in many respects of a quote from Adam Smith's book The theory of moral sentiments:
When the happiness or misery of others depends in any respect upon our conduct, we dare not, as self-love might suggest to us, prefer the interest of one to that of many.
Prof, I will forever miss the twinkle in your eyes, the high fives and your trademark "Hamba wena" when we had achieved our objectives after a long day's work.I will also miss the Afrikaans and Pedi lessons he gave me every morning.
Fellow South Africans, it is for these reasons, and many others, that I was inconsolable when I learned of Prof's unfortunate and untimely death. In fact, I found myself endlessly reciting the lines from John Donne's poem "Death Be Not Proud", and I quote:
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so. Towards the end of the same poem John Donne questions the arrogance of death, when, according to him, drugs and charms can give us an equally enjoyable sleep, and I quote:
And poppie or charmes can make us sleepe as well, And better than thy stroake. Why swell'st thou then?
Indeed, death should be ashamed of robbing South Africa of such a great man. However, if we understand and accept the inevitability of death and that his was a life well-lived, we should find some solace in the shining legacy of selfless hard work he leaves behind and in the fact that he reached the highest pinnacle of legislative service to his country. His name will forever be recorded among the names of those democrats who served the nation with distinction.
Robala ka kgotso, Ntate Kganyago. [Rest in peace, mister Kganyago.]
NgesiXhosa ndithi, ndiyabulela, ulale ngoxolo. [In isiXhosa we say, thank you, rest in peace.]