DA wants clarity from Lamola on Lungisa’s ‘irregular’ parole

Just a few hours after being released from jail on parole, former ANC Nelson Mandela Bay councillor Andile Lungisa allegedly asked council leaders to postpone all council meetings until February 2021.

The Democratic Alliance (DA) will ask Minister of Correctional Services Ronald Lamola to explain Lungisa’s parole, which the party describes as irregular.

Lungisa, who was released on Tuesday after serving only two months of a two-year prison term for assaulting a fellow councillor, petitioned acting mayor Tsonono Buyeye and Speaker Buyelwa Mafaya to shelve all council meetings this year.

This despite still being under prison restrictions and parole conditions.

His petition was opposed and challenged by the DA, with Eastern Cape provincial leader Nqaba Bhanga saying they would not be instructed what to do by a “criminally charged” Lungisa.

Bhanga said Lungisa’s action was “another example of the ANC and its connected cadres’ desperation to hold on to power and loot the coffers” of Nelson Mandela Bay.

“The DA will not be instructed on when municipal meetings should be held by a convicted criminal and prisoner. Lungisa is not behind bars, but he is still very much a prisoner. It is only the ANC that can be instructed by a prisoner,” Bhanga said.

Lungisa was styling himself as a “political prisoner” who only fought against the DA.

“His effort to draw parallels between himself and former president Nelson Mandela are shocking and should be treated with the disdain it deserves,” said Bhanga.

Lungisa was sentenced to an effective two years in jail after he broke a glass water jug over the head of DA councillor Rano Kayser during a council meeting in 2016.

Less than three months after he entered the North End Prison in Port Elizabeth to start serving his two-year sentence, he has been released on parole.

“The DA believes Lungisa’s release, even taking all parole regulations into account, is irregular and makes a mockery of our justice system,” Bhanga said.

DA MP James Selfe had posed questions to the portfolio committee on correctional services about Lungisa’s parole and expected answers by today, he said.

Bhanqa claimed that Lungisa had insulted Eastern Cape premier Oscar Mabuyane, President Cyril Ramaphosa, the Commission of Inquiry into State Capture and the DA, among others, soon after his release.

Attempts to get Lungisa to comment failed.

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