Dr Anshu Padayachee was the first South African black woman to obtain a PhD in criminology and her dissertation on domestic violence was used extensively for the promulgation of the Domestic Violence Act.
Trailblazer, acclaimed academic and gender activist Dr Anshu Padayachee passed away on Thursday after a long illness.
Dr Padayachee, who served as the CEO of the Technological Higher Education Network SA (THENSA) since March 2016, firmly believed that the future of South Africa lay in the hands of educated youth.
Well-known for her brave stance against domestic abuse, Dr Padayachee, together with her long-time friend Judge Navi Pillay, the former president of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), set up the Advice Desk for the Abused in 1986.
A unique organisation at the time, it was widely recognised for opening the vault on a taboo subject, and became widely recognised for its work, having trained police, social workers and NGO employees, and provided crisis intervention for more than a million women. The non-profit organisation provides counselling telephonically or on site for women (in the majority) based on alleged human rights violations.
Dr Padayachee was the first South African black woman to obtain a PhD in criminology and her dissertation on domestic violence was used extensively as a source guide for the promulgation of the Domestic Violence Act.
She developed and designed three training manuals and training programmes in the area of domestic violence.
Apart from her gender-based violence work, Dr Padayachee was involved in management, teaching and research at universities for more than 30 years.
After her long stint as a senior lecturer in criminology at the former University of Durban-Westville (UDW), she continued an illustrious career, being appointed as deputy vice-chancellor (academic) at the ML Sultan Technikon, now the Durban University of Technology (DUT), from 1998 to 2002 and acting vice-chancellor from 2001 to 2003.
Dr Padayachee contributed to establishing entrepreneurship and skills programmes for universities and TVET colleges and a SAQA-accredited programme in waste management.
She also helped establish electronic waste plants at six universities.
More recently, Dr Padayachee was a leading figure in academic and research-based communication among respected South African and Dutch senior research and academic staff in the discussion, planning, designing and implementation of the SA-Netherlands Research Programme on Alternatives in Development (SANPAD). After the final agreement on the initiative, she was elected as CEO.
SANPAD was a programme that fostered co-operation between South African and Dutch researchers and funded high-quality research relevant to development. Among its pioneering initiatives, the most important were the research projects that focused on poverty reduction.
Her close friend and former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Judge Navi Pillay, said she would miss Dr Padayachee’s generosity the most.
“She will always be remembered for her readiness to serve all of us - so everybody went to her with their problems. Long after she resigned from the Advice Desk for the Abused, she was still just readily available to help anyone. So that’s what all of us will miss - her generous heart and the time she took to care about everyone of us in need. So that’s why I feel it’s such a loss,” said Judge Pillay.
Dr Padayachee’s funeral will be held on Saturday.