Mabulu's work of 2010, Ngcono ihlwempu kunesibhanxa sesityebi (Xhosa translation: Better poor than a rich puppet), depicted various international political figures in the nude, including South African president Jacob Zuma.
[2] He questioned their motives in attacking it, having ignored Mabulu's own work – which depicts Zuma alongside Desmond Tutu, Robert Mugabe, Barack Obama and Nelson Mandela in similar fashion.
The African National Congress used a stronger language depicting the image as ″crossing the bounds of rationality to degradation, exploiting the craft of creative art for nefarious ends.
"[11] In October 2017 the African National Congress Women's League described Mabulu as "mentally colonised artist" for a painting depicting then presidential hopeful Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma in a sexual position while Zuma looks.
The Women's League said:[12]"[The painting] is a desperate move by the white monopoly capital and their praise singers, using a rented black painter to tarnish the image of these leaders hoping that it will stop the winding wheels of radical economic transformation."