Selfless struggle for Bentleys

Living in a R35 million house and driving a Bentley (and a Porsche), former ANC spokesperson Pule Mabe epitomises the hypocrisy of the "selfless struggle".

- Martin Williams

Such ostentation doesn't make Mabe stand out from the in-crowd. Comrades have been living like this for decades. To mark its centenary celebrations in 2012, the ANC paraded Mercedes-Benzes bearing the slogan "100 years of selfless struggle".

Indeed, there was no outcry from the party hierarchy when, in 2004, another ANC spokesperson, Smuts Ngonyama, declared: "I did not join the struggle to be poor".

Ngonyama was defending his R160 million stake in a Telkom BEE share scheme. In 2006, he was listed as one of five members of the ANC national executive committee who had amassed R1.5 billion between them.

Others were Saki Macozoma, Cyril Ramaphosa, Popo Molefe and Mohammed Valli Moosa - "dubbed the usual suspects, because they feature in so many BEE deals".