Cape Town - ActionSA party president Herman Mashaba has memorialised the party’s former Western Cape chairperson, Vytjie Mentor – who died a week ago after a long illness – as one of South Africa’s bravest women.
Giving the keynote address at a memorial service for Mentor at the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Cape Town, Mashaba led political colleagues and friends in eulogising the late state capture whistle-blower and former ANC MP.
Mashaba said Mentor, 58, had meant a lot to both ActionSA and himself. Speaking of her political involvement from a young age, he said Mentor used to tell him that her political consciousness came from her mother who was involved in women’s development programmes in their community.
He reminded the gathering that Mentor was elected to Parliament in 2002 and became the ANC’s parliamentary caucus chairperson.
Mashaba said Mentor was one of the ANC MPs placed on a special ad hoc committee to deal with a piece of legislation that proposed widespread powers for the state to breach civil rights, privacy and access to personal communications.
“When the vote came, Vytjie was the only ANC MP to vote with the opposition, effectively stopping the legislation from going to Parliament,” Mashaba said.
He said Mentor did not believe that truth, ethics or virtue could be bent for political expediency and that this stand had cost her dearly.
A neighbour of Mentor’s, Shana Ely, told the congregation that they got to know each other in 2009 because their children became friends.
“She might not have been a tall person in height, but she was an Amazonian warrior in stature. She was a woman who fought fiercely for what she believed in. She was caring, generous, brave and courageous,” Ely said.
Ely remembered her as a God-fearing woman of faith and integrity who never skimped on gifts and in fact tended to go overboard.
ACDP deputy president Wayne Thring, representing his party leader Kenneth Meshoe, said Mentor was a morally upright leader with an uncompromising stand against injustice and corruption.
He said for displaying these traits Mentor had been labelled a radical, a revolutionary, a malcontent and sometimes even as a thorn in the side of contemporary establishments.