LAST GOODBYE: The scene at Dr Pox’s funeral in King William’s Town yesterday. Picture: MICHAEL PINYANA
His callous killer ‘destroyed our future and that of our children’
By NTANDO MAKHUBU
and AVUYILE MNGXITAMA
KING William’s Town said a final goodbye to Dr Pox yesterday.
The well-loved physician, whose full name was Dr Pox Raghavjee, was slain by a gunman on Monday while on his way to his surgery.
Mourners turned out in large numbers to pay their last respects.
Members of the Indian community, friends, fellow doctors, representatives of pharmaceutical companies and his staff members gathered at his Kaffrarian home yesterday morning, while the family performed their farewell rituals.
The funeral cortege proceeded to the Cambridge Crematorium in East London, where friends and relatives alike spoke about the man they had grown to love over the years, describing him as a humble person, an optimist who always found the good in others.
His cousin, Manoobhai Raghavjee, remembered how they had grown up together from a very young age, went to the same school and even attended India’s Bombay University together.
“I have known him for 60-odd years. In that time he was not my cousin but my soul-mate,” he said.
Raghavjee said Dr Pox loved life and was always so positive about it that if he had been there yesterday he would have said: “Come on my friend, cheer up. Life must go on.”
The doctor’s body was found by a police officer a few metres from his green Mercedes along a deserted road near the Bhisho Stadium.
Close friend Dr Said Mohammed, Dr Pox’s room-mate at university, said he always kept his feet down and head up. “Looking at his lifeless body lying in that coffin earlier, I had to reminisce about the laughter he took everywhere with him,” he said.
Dr Pox’s children – Krischen, 28, Yashin, 27, and Khavita, 23 – told the Dispatch they would always remember their father for the love and sense of family he instilled in them.
“Supper table discussion were some of the most precious moments we shared,” said his daughter, Khavita, who will be graduating in medicine at the end of the year. She said following in her father’s footsteps had come naturally because she had “grown up in a surgery”: “I knew from the time I was five that I would become a doctor, something that always brought pride in my father’s heart.”
He taught them to be independent and to be responsible for their own happiness, said son Krischen: “He always kept a cool head; there were never any heated arguments in our house and that is what I have carried with me into my marriage.”
Xoliswa Bacela, who had worked for the doctor for 21 years, said he had been more than a boss, also a father to her. “He was a very humble person – he helped us with everything,” she said.
“Whoever killed Dr Pox has destroyed our future and the future of our children.”
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