While Tony Yengeni and his ANC comrades, friends and relatives will today slaughter a cow to celebrate the end of his 20-week incarceration for defrauding parliament, opposition parties have called his controversial early release on parole "totally unacceptable".

Yesterday the former ANC chief whip was visited by Correctional Services Minister Ngconde Balfour and ANC deputy president Jacob Zuma.

"Stick to your parole conditions or you will be back in jail," was the message Balfour conveyed to Yengeni when he read him the "riot act" in his cell at the Malmesbury Correctional Centre. Also present were members of Yengeni's family.

According to Correctional Services spokesperson Luphumzo Kebeni, the purpose was to brief Yengeni on his parole conditions and to make sure that he understood them. "His family were there because he will be released into their care, so they need to understand the conditions as well," he said.

"The reason the minister briefed Mr Yengeni about his parole conditions is because basically the buck stops with the minister. If anything happened, it would be the minister - as the head of the department - who would be ultimately responsible."

Yengeni's conditions of correctional supervision, which begins today, include house arrest and having to complete 16 hours of community service a month.

He has to report to a police station daily and is prohibited from leaving the district where he lives. Yengeni will only learn today where he will do community service.

"If Yengeni breaks any of these conditions, he will be investigated and face the consequences and go back (to jail)," said Kebeni. He will be under correctional supervision until 2008.

"Zuma visited Yengeni for about 30 minutes, it was a social visit," said Kebeni.

ID leader Patricia de Lille, who blew the whistle on corruption in the arms deal, yesterday said Yengeni's release after only five months was "totally unacceptable".

"I think it sends out completely the wrong message. The message his prosecution sent was that the judicial system was independent and that politicians could be prosecuted no matter how good their political connections."

DA correctional services spokesman James Selfe said he had asked that Malmesbury correctional services area commissioner Sipho Manqele be hauled before parliament's correctional servicess portfolio committee to explain alleged preferential treatment of Yengeni.

In 2003, Yengeni was found guilty of failing to declare a 47% discont on a luxury 4X4 from daimlerChrysler, which was a party in the controversial multibillion rand arms deal. Yengeni was then chairman of parliament's defence portfolio committee.

Last year, the embattled politician lost an appeal against his four-year sentence and was sent to Pollsmoor Prison in August. A string of allegations of preferential treatment started when he was trasferred to a hospital cell in the more comfortable Malmesbury Prison a day later.

ANC provincial secretary Mcebisi Skwatsha said he and other party officials would gather at Malmesbury Prison this morning to greet Yengeni onhis release, while ANC provincial chairman James Ngculu would be at NY1 Gugulethu, where a traditional Xhosa ceremony would be performed in his honour.

With acknowledgements to Karen Breytenbach, Shaun Smillie, Sapa and Cape Times.