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If it were not for Vytjie Mentor, Nomawele Njongo – who was sexually harassed by former ANC chief whip Mbulelo Goniwe – may never have had justice.
Mentor hit the headlines again this week after disclosing that the politically connected Gupta family had offered her the job of minister of public enterprises.
It’s nothing new for her.
Mentor’s had experience of doing the right thing, such as in 2006, when she was the chairperson of the ANC’s national caucus in Parliament.
She took the young woman under her wing and ensured the ANC’s women’s caucus supported her.
“Without Vytjie Mentor, that thing would never have been investigated,” Njongo, told City Press this week.
“She is a very resilient woman; she sacrificed her career and her life for me.
“Without her, I don’t know where my life would be. She stood by me.”
Njongo was the 21-year-old administrative assistant who accused Goniwe of making sexual overtures and trying to get her to have sex with him.
She confirmed this week that Mentor had ensured that the matter was investigated.
Goniwe was later found guilty by the ANC of abusing his office to obtain sexual favours and of bringing the party into disrepute.
In a flood of Facebook posts this week, Mentor revealed that the Gupta family had asked her “to become minister of public enterprises when Barbara Hogan got the chop, provided that I would drop the SAA flight route to India and give it to them.
“I refused and so I was never made a minister. The president was in another room when they offered me this in Saxonwold.”
Mentor also courted the ire of her political superiors as a member of the ad hoc committee processing the controversial Protection of State Information Bill in October 2010. She broke ranks when she raised her concerns about how the bill “gave great powers to state organs without adequate checks and balances to this power”.
She told a meeting of that committee how she had represented South Africa at the annual conference on intelligence in the US.
The South African government had consistently raised the need for a balance between human rights and secrecy, she said.
“In Washington, I represented the South African delegation and stood in front of a US Supreme Court justice advocating that human rights should not be sacrificed in the name of state secrecy.
“This was the core theme of the ANC and it had fought for this,” she said at the time.
Mentor added that she wanted to assure South Africans and the media that this was a principle from which the ANC would never deviate.
However, Mentor is not without her controversies.
In 2010, while chairperson of Parliament’s portfolio committee on public enterprises, she asked Transnet, an entity over which her committee had oversight, to cover her trip to China to participate in President Jacob Zuma’s state visit to that country.
Transnet paid more than R155 000 for first-class air tickets and her stay in five-star hotels during the trip.
At the time, Public Enterprises Minister Barbara Hogan reported Mentor to the ANC for soliciting the funds from Transnet and the party launched an investigation into the matter.
Ironically, this week, Hogan was among the first ANC members to validate Mentor and corroborate her claims about the Guptas.
Despite all this, Zuma maintained that “he has no recollection” of Mentor.
However, she chaired the ANC caucus between 2004 and 2008, and would have worked closely with him in his capacities as deputy president and the leader of government business in Parliament until 2005.
People who know Mentor say she has never been a wallflower.
Former DA parliamentary leader Lindiwe Mazibuko is among them.
She wrote in Business Day this week that she remembered Mentor “as a vibrant, high-profile and infuriating colleague in the National Assembly”.
Despite twice agreeing to speak to City Press this week, Mentor was unavailable for an interview.
