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.

[2] He earned a BTech in journalism from the Tshwane University of Technology (then called Technikon Northern Gauteng),[3] where he served as deputy president of the students' representative council from 1998 to 1999.

[7] 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.

[14][15] 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.

[13] The Mail & Guardian reported that Mabe attempted to attend an ANCYL leadership meeting as usual later in May and was escorted out by security guards.

[18] 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.

[3][4] In the aftermath of the national conference, in late January 2013, the ANCYL reinstated Mabe as Treasurer-General, acknowledging in a statement that "no proper process was followed in the removal of comrade Pule".

[20] However, less than two months after Mabe's reinstatement, the ANC National Executive Committee prematurely ended his term and that of the league's other leaders when it resolved to disband the incumbent ANCYL leadership corps.

[23] 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.

Mabe had been viewed as a possible successor to Malema since at least 2012,[13] and, despite the pending criminal charges against him, he emerged as one of the frontrunners for election as ANCYL President, alongside Ronald Lamola and Magasela Mzobe.

[27] 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.

[35][36][37] 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.

Investigation of this claim was deferred to the second volume of the report, released in April 2019, in which Madonsela's successor in the Public Protector's office, Busisiwe Mkhwebane, said that the allegation could not be substantiated.

[41] 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.

[42] 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 a internal complaint against him.

[45] 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.

[45] He also laid his own complaint with the police, alleging that the misrepresentations on his accuser's job application amounted to criminal fraud and had caused him personal harm.

[48] 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.

[50] 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.

[57] However, the conference re-elected Mabe to his third consecutive five-year term on the National Executive Committee; by popularity, he was ranked eighth of the 80 candidates elected, receiving 1,806 votes across the 4,029 ballots cast in total.