If you came here looking for the kind of pictures you would see in a property listing, you’re going to be disappointed.

Still, the images – which form part of the “evidence” that Ajay Gupta submitted to the state capture inquiry to try and discredit former ANC MP Vytjie Mentor – do give us some kind of glimpse behind the walls, gates and security guards.

The images were attached to the affidavit that Ajay filed to Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo, in a bid “to show how Mentor lied about her meeting with them, where he allegedly offered her the position of Public Enterprises minister“.

Zondo dismissed Ajay’s application to cross-examine former deputy finance minister Mcebisi Jonas, Mentor and former government communications head Themba Maseko, partly because the Gupta family would not return to SA to do so.

Zondo’s dismissal means we should take everything the Guptas say with a pinch of salt (well that, and the fact that they’re crooks), but the affidavits do give us a look at their denials, and how they’re trying to spin things.

Times LIVE with the basics:

Ajay Gupta denies ever meeting with Mcebisi Jonas, who claims a Gupta brother tried to bribe and threaten him into taking on the finance minister post and doing the family’s bidding.

He completely denies ever meeting Mentor, and describes her claims that he offered her the position of Public Enterprises minister as a “fiction”. Finally, he admits meeting and phoning Maseko, but denies ever doing so to bully him into channelling R600m in government advertising to the family’s media organisations.

Pretty sure that security guard who noted all the comings and goings at Saxonwold would disagree.

Let’s focus on Vytjie and those images:

[Ajay] denies she met Zuma at his family’s Saxonwold home, as she testified, and attached photographs of the notorious compound to his affidavit to contest her description of the house.

While Mentor described the house’s steps [below] as “cream marble”, Ajay says they are black granite. He denies her evidence that there is a “giant pillar” in the home’s reception area “or any pillar at all”.

While Mentor says there were two couches in the reception area, Ajay denies this, and says the area is in fact dominated by a grand piano. Ajay further denies there was a ladies’ and gents’ toilet, as claimed by Mentor, or that it had “gold handles”.

Here are those grand piano images:

So there’s a piano and not two couches, so the Guptas are in the clear. Got it.

In case you were wondering, their garden looks lovely:

Let’s get back to that affidavit and how the Guptas are trying to discredit the claims against them:

Ajay says her evidence that she was offered mutton curry during her alleged 2010 meeting with him, during which she says he offered her the post of minister of Public Enterprises, cannot be true. “We are of the Hindu religion and maintain a strictly vegetarian diet. It is anathema to suggest that meat of any form, let alone in the form of chopped up sheep, would be allowed to enter our home, let alone enter our kitchen and form part of a meal prepared and served in our home,” he states…

He also shoots down Mentor’s claims that his brothers arrived to pick her up from OR Tambo International Airport, carrying a placard with her name on it and wearing dark glasses. “In fact, neither my brother, Atul, who was the chairman of our group of companies at the time nor my brother Rajesh have ever undertaken the basic function of fetching people from the airport, let alone brandishing a placard bearing the name of any person, nor did they wear telecommunications earpieces … together with dark glasses and suits such as which security people wear,” he said.

Ajay adds that he thinks “significant cross-examination will be necessary”, as there are “substantial disputes” between Mentor’s version of events and the Guptas’ version of events.

Well, Ajay and crew, if you’re so confident, why don’t you fly back and have a go in person?

The affidavit contains one further image, which seems like a good place to end:

See, the Guptas are people just like us – they shit, have grand pianos in the entrance to their multi-mansion compound, and pervert an entire country’s political system for self-enrichment.

[source:timeslive]