Career in brief:

• Deputy Minister of Communications, since April 2004
• Formulations Chemist at Plascon Evans Paints (1974 – 1975)
• Microbiologist at Reckitt and Colman (1976 – 1979)
• Research chemist at Shell Chemical (1979 – 1980)
• Development Director at Community Education Development Trust (1980)
• Deputy Minister Padayachie also has extensive business and professional experience, having run his own Business Development and Marketing Company for the last few years in Advertising, Marketing and Project Development consultancy work.

Political and Professional experience

Mr. Padayachie served in various capacities in social movements and community organizations for change and democracy in the country, having risen to and held positions of leadership in the Natal Indian Congress, the United Democratic Front and the African National Congress (ANC). He joined the ANC in early 1972 and has been an active member ever since, serving in the underground, political and open mass democratic and legal structures. He was a member of the ANC KwaZulu Natal negotiations team at CODESA, the Congress for a Democratic South Africa that negotiated South Africa’s peaceful transition from Apartheid to Democracy.

He has the ability to engage in good networking relationships with several senior leaders in government, civil society, the business community and stakeholders at all levels. He also possesses exceptional leadership, training and motivational skills and the ability to motivate others and develop and work in teams. He is also an innovative, strategic and dynamic thinker and doer.

Mr. Padayachie has considerable senior and leadership level experience in development work. Throughout his career, as an academic and activist, he has been passionately motivated by his concerns for the development of the disadvantaged. Having made a contribution to the successful realization of political and democratic transformation, he remains committed to the eradication of poverty.