Vytjie Mentor takes issue with Home Affairs, SAA, Emirates records

Former African National Congress parliamentarian Vytjie Mentor questioned the accuracy of the records from the department of home affairs (DHA), Emirates Airlines, and South African Airways (SAA) used during her testimony at the commission of inquiry into state capture on Monday, saying the commission should hear testimony from witnesses from these entities and obtain additional parliamentary documents to confirm the veracity of these records.

The commission’s evidence leader, advocate Mahlabe Sello, on Monday used travel records from the DHA to show that Atul Gupta may have been in the country during a department of trade and industry (dti) trade mission in China between August 22, 2010, to August 26, 2010, where Mentor testified she met the three Gupta brothers – Atul, Rajesh, and Ajay.

Sello further tabled records from Emirates Airlines – a carrier Mentor testified had been used en route to China for the dti trade mission and, according to the records obtained by the commission from the airline, one Mentor used on her flight back to the country along with Ajay and Rajesh Gupta, and Duduzane Zuma.

The Emirates Airlines records showed that the carrier had not carried Atul Gupta in August during the dti trade mission to China.

ALSO READ: Mentor ‘saw’ Atul Gupta in China when he hadn’t even left SA, inquiry hears

Records the commission obtained from SAA show there is no record of Mentor flying from Cape Town to Johannesburg and back two weeks after the dti trade mission to China to meet with former president Jacob Zuma and the Gupta brothers, as she had testified.

Mentor told the commission last year that in 2010 she was offered the post of public enterprises minister, to replace Barbara Hogan, at the Gupta compound in Saxonwold, Johannesburg while former president Jacob Zuma was in the next room. This, she said, took place on the Monday, she testified she had flown from Cape Town to Johannesburg on board SAA and then back to Cape Town.

ALSO READ: No SAA record of Mentor’s flight to meet Zuma and the Guptas

Mentor said she did not have a problem with the commission hearing testimony from a witness of SAA, however, she requested that another witness of an airline independent from the national carrier, or a computer expert, should also be called to testify on the accuracy of the SAA records.

The chair of the commission, Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo, however, said there would be no need for an additional witness to testify on the accuracy of the SAA records as a witness from the airline would suffice.

“It is not clear to me why we would need anybody else to come and testify about SAA records because what we are looking at is the accuracy of the SAA records,” Zondo said, with Mentor responding that she would be “at ease” with only testimony from the SAA witness.

Mentor said she “has serious issues with the home affairs records” which was why she said on Tuesday that she could not make “a full concession” that Atul Gupta had not travelled to China for the dti trade mission.

Mentor suggested that the commission should obtain a report by the parliamentary portfolio committee on home affairs which conducted an inquiry into the department to verify the accuracy of the records the evidence leader used during her testimony on Monday.

“So, until the chair has received the report by the parliamentary inquiry into home affairs, I’m not making a full concession that [Atul] did not travel [to] China,” Mentor told the commission.

Zondo, however, said parliament has forwarded some inquiry reports to the commission, further suggesting that Mentor and her legal representatives should look into these reports and highlight specific findings that question the accuracy of the home affairs records.

“But I think the legal team will also look at the possibility of bringing a witness from home affairs,” Zondo said.

Mentor further emphasised that she had travelled from Cape Town to Johannesburg two weeks after the dti trade mission to China and not on the date suggested by the commission’s evidence leader during her testimony on Monday, October 2010.

She said “there are a confluence” of events and issues that discount the proposed October date because in her evidence she remembered mentioning that she recalled speaking with the former president at Saxonwold about her refusal to see Zuma two weeks prior while in China.

She further said what discounts the proposed date in October 2010 is that in her testimony last year, she said she recalled Ajay Gupta in either the Sahara offices or at the Gupta compound in Saxonwold during the Monday meeting she said took place two weeks after the dti trade mission to China telling her that the former president was delayed because he was held up in a meeting with Cosatu at ANC headquarters.

Mentor said her research showed that two weeks after the dti trade mission to China, there had been a strike by Cosatu and a meeting at Luthuli House with the leadership of the trade union with the ANC top six was convened, adding that the former president’s diary also indicates that on a Monday that corresponds with the two weeks after the China trip, the president was at the ANC headquarters.

After the short adjournment, Sello said Mentor’s legal representative had brought to her attention a 2011 Cosatu secretariat report which stated that the trade union had indeed met the ANC’s national office bearers on September 13, 2010 – a Monday.

However, Sello said there still was no SAA record of Mentor travelling from Cape Town to Johannesburg on Monday, September 13, 2010.

Sello said the commission’s team was yet to use the former president’s diary to confirm his whereabouts on Monday, September 13, 2010.

Mentor said she and her legal representatives would also assist the commission’s legal team with showing that all the three Gupta brothers were in the country on that particular Monday.

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