Johannesburg – President Zuma “has no recollection” of former ANC MP Vytjie Mentor and what she’s written about on social media, the Presidency has said.
Zuma has also dismissed as unfounded claims that Mentor travelled with him on a state visit to China in 2010.
In a statement released on Wednesday, the Presidency said it “refutes the misleading media reports stating that the former ANC MP, Ms Vytjie Mentor ‘accompanied’ President Jacob Zuma on a state visit to China in 2010”.
On Tuesday Mentor claimed on social media that she had been offered a job as a minister by the president’s friends, the Gupta family, provided she was prepared to “give them” a route to India that was being operated by South Africa Airways.
Mentor’s post on Facebook, which has since been deleted said: “But they had previously asked me 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 to them. I refused and so I was never made a minister. The President was in another room when they offered me this in Saxonworld”.
Mentor chaired Parliament’s portfolio committee on public enterprises but was reportedly removed from the post after it emerged that she got Transnet to bankroll a trip to China to join Zuma on a state visit at a cost of more than R150 000.
Read: Ministry details costs of Mentor’s trip
The Guptas have denied Mentor’s claim on Facebook and have dared her to make the submission in a signed affidavit.
The Presidency has said that Zuma “has no recollection” of the former MP.
The “president has no recollection of Ms Mentor and is not aware of the alleged incidents in her career that she has reportedly written about on social media”, it said.
The Presidency added: “Ms Mentor was definitely not part of the official delegation to the People’s Republic of China, should she have travelled to the country during the state visit.”
“By stating that Ms Mentor ‘accompanied’ President Zuma on a state visit to China, the media gives the public an incorrect impression of a status similar to that of ministers or deputy ministers who receive direct formal invitations from the President to accompany him on state visits, and who then join him on all official engagements during the visit as members of the official delegation.”
African News Agency