Vytjie Mentor, a former member of parliament and one of the State Capture witnesses who kept South Africa glued to the Zondo Commission, has passed away at the age of 58.
Vytjie Mentor dies: What’s the cause of death?
In a statement, Action SA leader Herman Mashaba revealed Mentor had been suffering from a lifelong illness and, prior to her death, she’d been admitted to hospital.
The information on the cause of her death, Mashaba added, was confirmed by her family over a phone call the party received on Tuesday.
“Vytjie [Mentor] had been ill for some time and this morning (Tuesday, 23 August 2022), her family called to inform us that she had succumbed to her illness after being hospitalised for several months,” Mashaba wrote.
The full extent of her health remains unknown, and the Mentor family has yet to release a statement with more information on the illness that took the life of a crucial cog in the fight against corruption.
The former MP served as ActionSA’s provincial chairperson in the Western Cape, and speaking on her ill health with Weekend Argus in June 2022, she revealed that issues that surfaced after her bariatric surgery forced her to take leave from work.
“I had a bariatric surgery to lose weight because of my injury in my leg I gained a lot of weight, but due to the hard lockdown I could not do follow-up medical inspections on the initial procedure.
“Afterwards, I found that there was a little bit of candidiasis which grew over time and spread throughout the entire system,” she revealed at the time,
Candidiasis, according to the CDC, “is a fungal infection caused by a yeast (a type of fungus) called Candida.” While the fungal infection can be treated, it can be deadly if left untreated for a long time.
It remains to be confirmed if complications with Candidiasis led to Mentor’s death.
Mentor is survived by her sister Martha Nkosi and her 27-year-old son.
Vytjie Mentor biography
Vytjie, born Mabel Patronella Mentor was birthed on 19 October 1963. She grew up in Taung, a small settlement situated in North West, where she matriculated at Batlhaping High School.
Mentor pursued her higher education at Hebron Theological College, East Rand College, the University of South Africa (UNISA) and Wits University. As a long-time servant of the African National Congress (ANC), Mentor was sworn in as a member of parliament and served in former president Thabo Mbeki’s Cabinet until 2004.
Between then and 2008, Mentor served as the ANC’s chairperson and thereafter, she occupied the same title at the Portfolio Committee on Public Enterprises. until 2014 when she vacated her position as an MP.
This came after the controversial trip to China in 2010, where Mentor’s travel expenses, it was later discovered, were absorbed by Transnet. Testifying at the State Capture Inquiry, Mentor sent shockwaves across the political realm when she alleged this was the period she was introduced to the notorious Gupta family and offered the Minister of Public Enterprises position.
The offer, Mentor recalled to Chief Justice Raymond Zondo, came with a condition: She had to drop South African Airways (SAA) Johannesburg to Mumbai route so that Jet Airways, an Indian airline, could take over.
The controversy of her testimony catapulted her into a mouthpiece for anti-corruption, and in March 2019, Mentor officially resigned from the ANC and joined the African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP). Shortly thereafter, the political veteran moved over to ActionSA and served as the Western Cape’s chairperson before her untimely death.
Reactions to Mentor’s death
Mentor’s passing came as unexpected to her supporters and peers. Here are some of the reactions to the news of her untimely death: