The flamboyant and typically self-assured Tony Yengeni once told journalists waiting outside his office: "You are like a pack of pesky dogs waiting for me."

The curt throwaway line was directed at reporters who had gone to his office to record yet another episode in a case that had become a classical tale of SA's struggle icon becoming a victim of what President Thabo Mbeki has termed "conspicuous material consumption".

Mbeki has also remarked that "all of us are aware of how the objective of personal enrichment pursued relentlessly by the dominant white minority, regardless of the high human cost, informed the value system of the oppressor and the oppressed".

"Thus," says Mbeki, "Cecil Rhodes and other successful business people after him to date came to represent the very epitome of human success, which all of us had to emulate.

"Today the best South African is the person, whether black or white, who is dressed in the most expensive clothes. He or she owns the most expensive car and lives in the most luxurious house. He or she consumes the most exotic products and spends holidays at the most expensive locations in SA and the rest of the world. He or she will have the most expensive coffin and funeral. Anybody who questions this value system is a moegoe or a mampara."

Mbeki could easily have been speaking about Yengeni, a natty dresser with an exquisite taste for the finest cloth.

The post-1994 tendencies of the former African National Congress (ANC) chief whip belied his militant background as an impious and sacrilegious operative for Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), fighting the apartheid system. Yengeni was arrested and tortured by apartheid security police. He left the country to train as an MK operative in Angola, and later studied political science in the Soviet Union. While posted in Lesotho, Yengeni became close to the assassinated SA Communist Party leader Chris Hani.

A fiery speaker, Yengeni is not known for his diplomacy as he often chooses to shoot straight from the hip. It is partly for this that many of his opponents will rejoice in his demise and departure from Parliament.

Back in October 1993, Yengeni caused a stir when he opposed the granting of the Nobel Peace Prize award to former SA president FW de Klerk because "his hands were full of blood".

The man described as a militant by the media and very close to ANC Women's League president Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and the late former ANC Youth League leader, Peter Mokaba, argued that De Klerk did not deserve to be joint Nobel Peace Prize winner with ANC leader Nelson Mandela.

He argued Mandela was a freedom fighter, and De Klerk was an "oppressor" and "murderer".

Yengeni, Madikizela-Mandela and Mokaba, dubbed populists by the media, have had a rather colourful controversial political history ever since Mokaba coined the chant "kill the boer, the farmer" and Madikizela-Mandela shocked many by declaring "with our tyres and matches we will liberate this country".

Yengeni also sparked concern within right-wing circles when he made it clear he would campaign personally to have Hani's killer, Clive Derby-Lewis and Janus Walusz hanged under an "ANC government", and that people like them should face Nuremberg type trials in a new SA. But, Yengeni appears to have failed to grasp the situation and the seriousness of his problem with regards to the arms deal controversy. And after hundreds of thousands of rand wasted in legal fees, and his political career damaged, it was his lack of contrition that undid him. There is a possibility he could have been censured, but still kept his job had he acknowledged wrongdoing early on.

Asked just after his arrest in October 2001 if he was a scapegoat in the controversial arms deal, Yengeni told reporters: "I have always denied the allegations with the contempt they deserve, and this was a political witch-hunt. I still dismiss them, and I still insist that I am innocent and will prove that in court."

This defiant stance crumbled only last month when he pleaded guilty to a charge of fraud as part of a plea agreement with the state. He was acquitted on the main charge of corruption.

Yengeni's problems stemmed from a 47% discount he received on a luxury Mercedes-Benz ML 320 4x4 from European Aeronautic Defence Systems one of the companies that benefited from the arms deal.

In his analysis of greed as it applies to SA, Mbeki said: "Within the ranks of our movement, this translates into a struggle for positions.

"This is about political power, which ensures personal access to material resources. Many in our ranks and society in general are adherents of the philosophy of legitimate avarice...

"The fact, however, is that many in (the public) sector have derived their value system from the private sector. Generically, this latter sector believes that every person has his or her purchase price. Some in the public sector are ready to be bought, provided the price is right."

Yengeni's price was that of a 4x4 Mercedes Benz.

With acknowledgements to Pule Molebeledi and Business Day.