Pule Mabe

Puleng Peter "Pule" Mabe (born 19 March 1980) is a South African politician who served as the national spokesperson of the African National Congress (ANC), South Africa's governing party, from 2018 to 2023. He formerly represented the ANC in the National Assembly from 2014 to 2017.

Mabe rose to national prominence in 2008 when he was elected Treasurer-General of the ANC Youth League, then under the leadership of Julius Malema. Amid divisions over Malema's suspension from the ANC and over Mabe's political support for Jacob Zuma, Mabe was removed from his party position by a motion of no confidence in May 2012 and then reinstated in January 2013. After his term in the league office ended in March 2013, he launched an abortive campaign to succeed Malema as ANC Youth League president. He was elected to Parliament in the 2014 general election but resigned in mid-2017.

Mabe was elected to his first term on the ANC National Executive Committee in 2012. After his re-election at the party's 54th National Conference in December 2017, he was appointed ANC spokesperson in February 2018. He was elected to a third consecutive five-year term on the National Executive Committee in 2022.

A journalist by training, Mabe also had a career in business, and his former business dealings have attracted controversy. A 2012 contract between his company and the state-owned Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa was the subject of a Public Protector investigation and a parliamentary misconduct finding, and in 2014 Mabe was acquitted on a charge of defrauding the South African Social Security Agency.

Early life and career Mabe was born on 1 March 1980 in Namakgale, a township in Phalaborwa in present-day Limpopo. He was raised by a single mother who died when he was 22. where he served as deputy president of the students' representative council from 1998 to 1999. Later, in June 2019, he completed a Master of Business Leadership at the University of South Africa.

After he earned his undergraduate degree, Mabe worked as a print journalist. at the Mail & Guardian. In the early 2000s, he left journalism and ultimately was employed at the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa), where he served as executive manager for corporate affairs until his resignation in the 2008/2009 financial year. He also pursued his own business career, establishing a publishing company called KG Media. He was re-elected to the position, again alongside Malema, in June 2011. During his tenure as Treasurer-General, the league approached insolvency. In addition, the pro-Malema caucus of the ANCYL reportedly resented Mabe's support for Zuma's bid to be re-elected ANC President, as it was at odds with the ANCYL's unofficial platform at the time.

Motion of no confidence In May 2012, the ANCYL National Executive Committee passed a motion of no confidence in Mabe and dismissed him as Treasurer-General, though he would remain an ordinary member of the league. The motion reportedly arose from allegations that Mabe had mismanaged the league's funds and, through his own ANCYL presidential ambitions, had sown division in the league. the Sunday Independent said that it was the third attempt to remove Mabe from the ANCYL leadership. Mabe was the youngest member of the committee at that time and his election was linked to his support for Zuma's re-election bid at the same conference. He was appointed to the National Executive Committee's subcommittee on communications. In the same statement, the league acknowledged and accepted the mainstream ANC's decision not to reinstate Malema.

National Assembly: 2014–2017 In the 2014 general election, Mabe was elected to a seat in the National Assembly, the lower house of the South African Parliament; he was ranked 53rd on the ANC's party list. News24 said that in Parliament Mabe "consistently and fiercely defended" President Zuma.

Fraud trial While a Member of Parliament, Mabe was a defendant in a criminal trial which dated back to November 2013, when he turned himself in for arrest at the Sunnyside police station in Pretoria. He and his co-accused, Paseka Letsatsi and Kabedi Ramosa, were charged with fraud, money laundering, and theft. Shivambu has since joined Jacob Zuma newly called MK Party on 15 August 2024.

Mabe was released on R10,000 bail Mabe and his co-accused were acquitted in December 2014. Mabe said that he had been "tried in court and the court of public opinion" and that his reputation had been severely damaged. However, the Mail & Guardian reported that the ANC's top leadership urged him – without success – to withdraw from the contest because of the pending fraud charges against him.

The league's elective conference was scheduled for December 2014, but, when it opened, the national ANC unexpectedly announced that the conference would instead be a "consultative" conference and that no leadership vote would take place.

In 2015, Mabe was still considered a presidential candidate, although the City Press reported that he had lost the backing of the influential "Premier League" – David Mabuza, Supra Mahumapelo, and Ace Magashule, the Premiers of Mpumalanga, North West, and Free State respectively, who apparently had switched their support to Collen Maine. There was also substantial controversy about Mabe's age: in March 2015, he turned 35, the cut-off age for membership in the ANCYL, but it was not clear whether he would remain eligible until his 36th birthday. Maine was elected unopposed and Mabe was succeeded as Treasurer-General by Reggie Nkabinde.

Parliament's Joint Committee on Ethics and Members' Interests subsequently launched its own investigation in response to a complaint alleging that Mabe, in the Prasa saga, had breached the parliamentary code of conduct. The initial improper award of the Prasa contract had taken place before Mabe was sworn into the National Assembly, but he was in his seat in 2015 when the contract was unlawfully extended.

Resignation In mid-2017, the ANC appointed Mabe as the party caucus's whip in Parliament's Standing Committee on Finance. News24 speculated that he might have been "bitter" that President Zuma had not appointed him as a Deputy Minister or Minister in his cabinet, although Mabe rejected that interpretation. He was nonetheless re-elected to the party's National Executive Committee, ranked 25th of the 80 elected candidates by popularity. In the aftermath of the conference, on 6 February 2018, the ANC announced that Mabe had been appointed as the party's national spokesperson, effective immediately. He succeeded Zizi Kodwa in that role.

Sexual harassment allegation In December 2018, Mabe took a leave of absence from his ANC work in order to address an allegation of sexual harassment after his personal assistant laid an internal complaint against him. She alleged that Mabe had made unwanted sexual advances on three separate occasions and that, when she rejected his advances, he had emotionally abused her and reduced her salary. Mabe strongly denied the accusation and said that he had lowered her salary because he had discovered that she had fraudulently misrepresented her qualifications in her job application.

While on leave, Mabe was replaced in an acting capacity by his predecessor, Zizi Kodwa, and then by Dakota Legoete. In February 2019, an internal ANC panel chaired by Sdumo Dlamini cleared Mabe of sexual harassment and ruled that both he and the complainant should return to work. However, dissatisfied with the ANC finding, the complainant lodged a formal complaint against Mabe with the police, and he voluntarily extended his leave in line with the ANC's step-aside policy. He returned to work at Luthuli House in early April 2019.

SIU investigations While ANC spokesman, Mabe remained involved in business, developing and patenting a model of three-wheel motorbike, labelled the Kariki, that was specially modified to transport solid waste in under-serviced remote or highly populated areas such as informal settlements. The Karikis were made and sold by Mabe's company Enviro Mobi. Mabe later said that he had resigned from Enviro Mobi in 2014, though he retained the patent for the Karikis.

In 2017 and 2018, Enviro Mobi reportedly received R27-million in state contracts, with the Gauteng provincial government and City of Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality, to supply Karikis to waste collectors. In April 2021, President Cyril Ramaphosa granted the SIU a mandate to investigate the Enviro Mobi contracts more thoroughly. Other contenders for the office included Bejani Chauke, Mzwandile Masina, and Gwen Ramokgopa. When the conference opened, Masina withdrew from the race and endorsed Mabe, saying that he and Mabe had shared objectives – including shared support for the ANC presidential bid of Zweli Mkhize – and therefore wished to avoid splitting the vote. However, at the time of Masina's withdrawal, his name had already been printed on the ballot and voting had begun; Mabe lost to Ramokgopa by a margin of 157 votes, receiving 1,652 votes against her 1,809. He said that he would not seek reappointment as spokesperson.

Personal life Mabe met his wife, Hleki, while he was an undergraduate. As of 2018, they had two children: a son, Kgothatso (born 2003), and a daughter, Naledi (born 2010).