Ex-MP ‘bully’ causes suicide

SUICIDE: DESPERATE PARLY EMPLOYEE SHOOTS HIMSELF IN ‘PROTEST’ Leaves note describing 20 months of daily misery under ANC member.

Desperate parly employee shoots himself in ‘protest’ after 20 months of ‘daily misery’.

The parliamentary manager who shot himself in his office last week laid the blame for his suicide at the door of a former ANC MP. He claimed in his suicide note that several parliamentary structures failed to support him from the abuse he was suffering at the ex-MP’s hands, after he became his manager in parliament’s international relations and protocol division.

The official, Lennox Garane, 57, had apparently left a note saying his suicide was a protest against 20 months of bullying. The note was circulated among mourners at his memorial service.

Headed “It’s A Protest Suicide”‚ the note described his daily misery working for a former ANC MP.

He claimed to have submitted a grievance which the MP refused to consider‚ “saying parliament is a political environment”.

Garane said he interpreted that as meaning political appointees were “free to do as they wished with lives of those below them”.

He also claimed to have submitted complaints to the parliamentary accounting officer, as well as Speaker Baleka Mbete and National Council of Provinces chair Thandi Modise – all of which proved futile.

“Twenty months on‚ I could not take it any more – I had to resort to this protest action to get the message across to the perpetrators and protectors of unfairness.”

On her website, Notes from the House, Moira Levy, former manager in parliament’s communication services, warned against the “red herring” of turning the investigation into Garane’s death into a matter of security at parliament.

“The collective parliamentary condemnation of apparent flaws in security control are a dangerous red herring‚ diverting attention away from the real reason that an employee of parliament entered the building bearing a gun‚ made it to his second-floor office and‚ sitting at his desk‚ made the decision to take his own life‚“Levy wrote.

“Parliament, if you care at all about your staff’s wellbeing, look not at the scanners and security teams at the gates, but at the reasons a parliamentary employee took his own life in an office of parliament, which to anyone could sound like a terrible comment on the very place itself.” She also documented her and other parliamentary workers’ daily struggles working there.

Deputy Speaker Lechesa Tsenoli promised to launch an inquiry into Garane’s suicide. –