Speech at Theresa Nannan Reddy's funeral Dr. Essop Pahad, 29 August 2015 To the family - brother, sisters, nieces, friends, Vanessa, Nadine and Niki, on behalf of the ANC, please accept our deepest sympathy at the death of our dearest friend and comrade Theresa Nannan Reddy. She was without a doubt strong, warm hearted, generous, resilient with a lekker sense of humour. Theresa had a considerable commitment, love and loyalty to our revolutionary struggle, the ANC, SACP and SACTU. In the course of our very long, persistent, difficult and complex struggle there are many unsung heroines and heroes. She was an unsung heroine. She worked selflessly for the ANC. Whatever tasks she was given, she performed diligently, with enthusiasm and a happy disposition. In exile we developed a firm friendship and comradeship with Issy and Ramnie Dinat, Billy and Theresa Nannan and Meg and myself. With Issy and Indres Naidoo we used to go to the home of Theresa and Billy to play bridge. She cooked for us whilst looking after the children. At that time Niki was still in his nappies. From time to time she would berate us for ignoring her and the children and only concentrating on our bridge games. Eventually she decided that the best plan was to learn to play bridge. Unfortunately Theresa never got to grips with the complexities associated with bridge. She remained a wonderful hostess, but we always had to be careful not to cross her with the wrong words or comments. A word about Billy: Billy was an outstanding revolutionary - a profound intellectual with a sharp, incisive and instinctive understanding and appreciation of the revolutionary process and international solidarity. He was one of my best and dearest friends and comrades. Her love and devotion to Billy and her children was deep and affectionate. For Vanessa and Dino and Niki, Theresa and Billy would go to great lengths to ensure that they had something to eat, had clothes, money for entertainment and received a proper education. Those who knew her well will always also cherish her stubbornness and if needs be belligerence in standing her ground in debates and arguments however fierce. It did not matter who she was debating or arguing with, she was confident of her own abilities, comfortable in her own skin and woe betide the person who tried to cow her into submission. To be cautious was not her style. Theresa was a wonderful mother, sister, friend, comrade and freedom fighter. Let us bow our heads in saying Hamba Kahle, to an ANC comrade and feisty freedom fighter. -- -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] . --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "YCLSA Discussion Forum" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
