black class war

Kenny Kunene, a former gangster turned businessman, gave what he called “the mother of all parties” for his 40th birthday. he treated the important — including Zizi Kodwa, President Jacob Zuma’s spokesman, and Julius Malema, the leader of the governing party’s youth wing — to $1,300 bottles of Dom Pérignon. Kunene himself swigged a bottle of Armand de Brignac Champagne that goes for more than $1,500.

Kunene said that his was “honest money spent on honest fun.” He describes his success as proof of the nation’s democracy, and he told Mr. Vavi, who is also black: “You remind me of what it felt like to live under apartheid. You are telling me, a black man, what I can and cannot do with my life.”

Zwelinzima Vavi, leader of Cosatu, the powerful trade union federation allied with the governing African National Congress, had accused Mr. Kunene of “spitting on the face of the poor” and declared that parties where people who have gotten rich in dubious ways flaunt their wealth “turn my stomach.”