MENTOR HAS FRESH GO AT PRESIDENT
FORMER ANC MP Vytjie Mentor says President Jacob Zuma is sly‚ his deputy Cyril Ramaphosa blows hot and cold‚ and Helen Zille is her personal friend.
Addressing the SA First Forum gathering in Cape Town yesterday‚ Mentor said Zuma might appear clever but is not.
“It might be that he appears clever‚ I think he is actually sly.”
She said that was the reason why the apparatus of the governing party was largely about patronage.
Mentor said Ramaphosa went with the flow and was unpredictable.
“I think there are times he resonates with the right things and there are times he does not resonate with the right things. I find him‚ he blows hot and cold‚” she said of Ramaphosa.
Mentor, a former caucus leader of the ANC in parliament, made headlines when she claimed in March that the Guptas offered her a Cabinet job while Zuma was in another room in the family mansion in Saxonwold, Johannesburg.
Zuma has since claimed that he had no “recollection” of Mentor.
Yesterday, she claimed that when she warned the ANC that it would lose some metros in the local government polls‚ she was accused of being a DA agent.
“They called me a DA agent‚ which I am not. Hellen Zille is my friend‚” she said.
She accused the entire leadership of the ANC Youth League and ANC Women’s League, as well as some members of the ANC national executive committee of being elected on the basis of patronage.
“They are serving the agenda of their master [Zuma].
“I am not calling for violence‚ but there should be ways to topple patronage.
“If you’re pinning your hopes in the hands of those in the ANC, you’re pinning your hopes in the hands of beneficiaries of patronage.
“It is not the ANC and its leadership which is going to put this country right. It is the people of this country who will put this country right‚” she said.