Mentor questions phone records validity

FORMER ANC MP Vytjie Mentor has questioned the authenticity of phone records submitted by former President Jacob Zuma’s aide Lakela Kaunda.

Mentor took the stand for the second day at the state capture commission of inquiry for cross-examination. She told the commission last year that Kaunda called her, inviting her to Johannesburg to finally meet Zuma, as she had tried to secure the meeting to discuss the country’s pebble-bed modular reactor.

Mentor was chairperson of Parliament’s public enterprises committee at the time. Her travel to Johannesburg landed her at the Gupta family compound in Saxonwold, where she claimed she was offered minister of public enterprises position while Zuma sat in the next room.

Kaunda denied contacting Mentor and submitted her own phone records to the commission.

Kaunda’s advocate, Henry Cowley, told the commission that no such communication took place between his client and Mentor, as shown in the phone records from Vodacom.

Mentor said: “I cannot attest to veracity of these records… chairperson. They are from Kaunda and not from the service provider… the same service provider could not provide me with my own records… I was told that service provider does not keep records for more than five years.”

Mentor said it has been a long period between when she blew the whistle and the establishment of the commission, and that records could have been tampered with.

“It is possible that such gaps allowed interference with records. Some of the record do not look official ... some do not have official letterheads, they look computer generated.”