More Vytjie capture shocks
SHE TELLS JUDGE HER HOTEL ROOM WAS BROKEN INTO
A TEARFUL former ANC MP Vytjie Mentor yesterday raised concerns over her safety after discovering the ledger of the door of the room she was staying in during the Zondo Commission into state capture had been broken.
Mentor told commission chairperson Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo she did not want to sound like an alarmist, but she could not return to a hotel room she did not feel safe in.
She said she discovered that the door ledger was broken two nights ago, and had alerted the hotel. When she arrived back from the commission, she found it had been fixed.
Upon leaving her hotel room yesterday morning, Mentor said she realised she had left her glasses behind.
“I went back to my room, which is accessible using a card. But the door would not open with the card.
“I then decided to see if it would open without using the card, and it did…
“If I had not forgotten my glasses, I would have come here having left a room that is unlocked.
“I am worried about going back to a room that I don’t know who has accessed it and what might happen,” she told Justice Zondo, as she wiped her tears.
Zondo assured Mentor her safety came first and instructed the head of the legal team, Paul Pretorius, and the commission’s secretary, Khotso de Wee, to liaise with her and her lawyers to find safer alternative accommodation, as of last night.
“I hear your concerns, and thank you for raising this important issue.
“Your evidence implicates a lot of people; they may come here and dispute what you said and provide their evidence, but you are concerned about your safety.
“If it means you have to be moved to alternative accommodation, then it must be done.
“I will check with Pretorius and De Wee this evening and ensure arrangements are made,” Justice Zondo said.
Mentor is the third witness at the inquiry. She testified as to how former president Jacob Zuma and government officials allegedly did the bidding of the fugitive Gupta family, who allegedly amassed as much as R6 billion through questionable contracts at stateowned enterprises.
She said Zuma and his son Duduzane gave the Gupta brothers an unfair advantage, as they accessed state resources and even picked who became cabinet ministers from their Saxonwold compound.
Mentor testified that Ajay Gupta had revealed top-secret information regarding stateowned arms manufacturer Denel during a meeting at the compound.
This was a meeting that Mentor testified she was called to in 2010 when she headed Parliament’s portfolio committee on public enterprises.
She said she had requested to meet Jacob Zuma, but ended up meeting with Ajay Gupta in Saxonwold.
At the meeting, she said the Guptas offered her a promotion to become public enterprise minister in place of the then incumbent, Barbara Hogan, if she agreed to cancel SAA’s Mumbai, India, route.
Mentor testified that Zuma was in the next room when the offer was made.
The former ANC MP said she was shocked at Gupta’s revelations about Denel.
“He brought forward the issue of Denel... he mentioned a specific matter that was between Denel and some companies in India and the Indian government,” said Mentor.
“That issue was a top-secret matter that no private citizen should have known about… I was a member of the joint standing committee on intelligence and knew about that matter, but I didn’t know much about it.
“I do not want to disclose much about that here, but Gupta said there was something regarding that matter that he wanted to resolve for Denel and the Indian government,’’ Mentor said.