Ben Turok's pathetic defence of Tony Yengeni and potentially errant MPs cannot go unchallenged.

Sure, Professor Turok, we do sympathise with the previously disadvantaged MPs who now live the high life and often appear to have scant regard for the way in which taxpayer's hard-earned money is spent, wasted or misappropriated.

You seem to have forgotten that there is a two-letter word beginning with N, which is very easy to say.

This word can be used by everyone in all situations, regardless of one's social standing or past.

What has shocked every honest citizen is Yengeni's arrogance (which extended even to his arriving at the opening of parliament, and in yet another allegedly ill-gotten vehicle), his (at least public) inability to show any remorse, his outright lies to the media and to parliament, and the (probably unprecedented) extravagant steps he took to publicly deny any wrongdoing. His benefactor might be regretting his or her generosity right now.

What has possibly shocked the electorate even more is the way the ANC closed ranks and protected Yengeni, even up to the day before he resigned. ANC MPs chose to disallow a motion put forward by the Speaker who, in quite an unusual move, challenged her own party. I would have thought that as a result, she would have tendered her resignation by now.

No, Professor Turok, you are actually wrong: every culture and religion teaches what is right and what is wrong, and nothing in Yengeni's past could have led him to believe that what he did was right.

Be that as it may, perhaps all MPs (and, for that matter, all public office-bearers) should be made to attend courses where they are taught to keep to the straight and narrow path and to resist the temptations that inevitably come their way.

And where is Comrade Winnie Madikizela-Mandela in all this? Turok's reasoning presumably exonerates her too from her misdemeanours?

She publicly supported Yengeni when the media first broke the news, but we have heard nothing since his cowardly confession - for this is what his plea bargain was, an easy way out that saved him from probable imprisonment.

With acknowledgements to Michael Vermeer and Cape Argus.