East London resident Luyanda Matshingana was released on parole in December after spending 22 years in jail for crimes he maintains he did not commit, and now wants to be exonerated.

A Daily Dispatch report says Matshingana was arrested in 1999 at the age of 20 for rape and robbery.

In 2002, he was sentenced to life in jail for the two crimes. He sought parole after 18 years in jail and in 2017 – during a victim-offender dialogue – the complainant in the case reportedly confessed that Matshingana had not raped her.

He said authorities knew he had been wrongly convicted because there was no physical or DNA evidence linking him to the crimes.

However, Correctional Services claimed Matshingana had been convicted of rape and robbery of a minor and sentenced to life imprisonment in August 2002 after he was found to have been present at the crime scene with an accomplice who ‘played a major role in the events that resulted in his conviction’. 

The court had found that Matshingana and his accomplice ‘were acting in concert or common cause’.

‘This unidentified accomplice, as per the evidence presented during the hearing, was the one who actually raped the minor while Luyanda Matshingana kept a lookout,’ Correctional Services said.

‘The court found that the victim never indicated that Matshingana had raped her, but her evidence was that Matshingana was part and parcel of that rape because he made it possible for her to be raped by giving assistance to the rapist.’

Matshingana said he would soon approach the courts in a bid to clear his name, with the hope that his criminal record would be expunged.

Full Daily Dispatch report