Vytjie in a spin at inquiry

Mentor’s testimony yesterday is punctuated by contradictions and uncertainty.

Three months since she last took the witness stand, former ANC member of parliament Vytjie Mentor yesterday conceded to the Commission of Inquiry into State Capture that Atul Gupta and businessperson Fana Hlongwana were not part of the official SA investment delegation to China 10 years ago, where she claimed to have seen Gupta.

She also did not provide evidence of SA Airways (SAA) flight records to back her earlier testimony she had travelled from Cape Town to Johannesburg on October 15, 2010 for an engagement with former president Jacob Zuma. That ended up being a meeting at the Guptas’ Saxonwold compound and she was offered the post of public enterprises minister.

Under cross-examination by the commission’s senior counsel, Mahlape Sello, Mentor, who was presented with Emirates Airline and home affairs records proving Atul Gupta was in South Africa during the alleged China trip, Mentor was forced to make a retraction.

Turning to the encounter with Ajay Gupta at the Saxonwold family home, Sello pointed out that neither SAA flight records, the parliamentary travel agency nor Zuma’s official itinerary records backed her evidence she had flown from Cape Town to Johannesburg.

Sello said: “SAA and SA Express have provided us with your travel movements from July to December 2010, but your October 15, 2010 flight details do not appear. We have also obtained parliamentary travel documents and former president Zuma’s diary from the Presidency, but we cannot find a record supporting your claim of having taken the flight.”

Mentor said she found inconsistencies between records supplied to the commission by SAA and those obtained from parliament, requesting the commission check on her travel in 2010 based on her Voyager miles account. The commission’s enquiries to British Airways to ascertain whether she made an SAA return trip from Cape Town to Johannesburg on October 15, 2010 also drew a blank. Asked by commission chair Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo if she might have travelled on a day other than October 15, 2010, Mentor was emphatic: “That remains my version. I travelled and returned that day on SAA.”

Zondo added: “It is important to establish how you travelled on that day and for records to back it up.”

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