Lungisa puts his fightback plan in motion

Embattled African National Congress (ANC) Nelson Mandela Bay councillor Andile Lungisa is preparing to mount an offensive on his detractors within the ruling party and go for “a win in the highest court in the land”.

Lungisa will next week file legal papers before the Constitutional Court to appeal a Supreme Court of Appeal decision to uphold his conviction, after being found guilty of assaulting DA councillor Rano Kayser with a glass jug during a heated council meeting.

In an interview with The Citizen, Lungisa, who has not vacated his council seat, despite letters from the ANC Eastern Cape leadership, revealed his two-pronged legal and political strategy.

“I am not going anywhere,” said Lungisa.

“I am still a councillor of the ANC in the Nelson Mandela Bay metro and branch leader in Ward 2. There were letters, which were written by the provincial ANC to me.

“I responded to the ANC leaders here in the province, showing them that the letters written to me were unconstitutional. Sometimes people undermine their own procedures in terms of ANC constitution.”

He says his upcoming Constitutional Court challenge centres on the video shown to the Supreme Court of Appeals allegedly not being the original, but he says it has been doctored to create a distortion of facts.

“If you check the video, you will see that I was merely defending myself against an attack by three people. I can’t be judged differently from any other member of society, while the constitution says we are all equal before the law.

“I was told by the Supreme Court of Appeals that I never showed any remorse, when during my testimony in isiXhosa, I did so.”

ANC factionalism

On factionalism within the ruling party, Lungisa said – despite supporting former ANC president Jacob Zuma and former wife Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma in ANC elective conferences – he was “not a factionalist”.

“I supported president Zuma in the ANC national general council in 2005 when it was not fashionable to do so. I then supported him at the 2007 Polokwane national conference, where he emerged victorious.

“I supported Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma at Nasrec national conference because she was not endorsed by the white monopoly capital in South Africa. I have been consistent in my entire political life in the ANC, of giving support to the weak and not going with the flow.

“I also have a track record of speaking out on issues, without concerns for impact on political favours. I never took politics as a career to be able to say I have a future.

“What has always guided me is that my participation or my leadership is not about gaining status. What has also always driven me is the desire to restore the ANC to its rightful position in society.”

Turning to his detractors within the ANC in the Eastern Cape, said Lungisa: “Coming from a home of political warriors, I was born in the struggle and will never be chased away from the ANC by people whose parents worked for the system of apartheid.

“If you can assess all those individuals holding leadership positions in the ANC here, their own parents were not part of the liberation struggle, but worked for the system in the former Transkei and Ciskei homelands.

“All that they knew was to eat bones and crumbs from the master’s table.”

brians@citizen.co.za

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