Julius Malema, the EFF’s fiery leader, showed up at last week’s protest with his own twist on the uniform, combining the party’s trademark red shirt and red beret with a checkered Palestinian scarf, worn in support of Gaza’s besieged Palestinians. He looked every bit the part of a communist revolutionary.

But Malema remains haunted by corruption allegations and a penchant for conspicuous material consumption. During a campaign stop in April, his advocacy for the poor rang hollow to the journalist Sibongakonke Shoba, who pointed out the literally glaring example of sunlight glinting off the buckles of his Louis Vuitton loafers, which retail for around $700. Journalists mocked Malema’s “bling shoes,” with one asking, in jest, if Malema was the “misunderstood Cinderella” of South African politics.

The gap between Malema’s rhetoric and dress has long invited critiques of the divisive politician as a champagne socialist. In 2010, when Malema was still making his name as an orator in the ANC’s Youth League, his Gucci suits and $24,000 Breitling watch often clashed with his populist message, which advocated for the nationalization of the country’s privately owned mines and the redistribution of its wealth and land. While his platform encompassed a number of causes that might, theoretically, appeal to the left, he alienated many supporters not only through his flamboyant style, but also through his blunt, boastful words, which at times crossed over into hate speech, according to his critics. His enthusiasm for leading sing-alongs of tunes like “Shoot the Boer” enraged the white Afrikaner minority, and his victim-shaming comments about a woman who had accused President Jacob Zuma of sexual assault enraged many others.

These incidents, along with Malema's frequent clashes with Zuma himself, eventually led to Malema’s expulsion from the ANC in 2011, at which point he claimed that he was "finished politically." Malema, who had been active within the ANC since he was nine years old, said he would instead devote himself to cattle-farming. "I have 20 cattle now," he said, in a modest statement of resignation, "we will breed them, take them to the abattoir, slaughter them, and then sell the meat."

Malema’s reputation suffered further damage soon afterward when a forensic audit of his assets suggested that he was receiving kickbacks from government contractors. According to the report, he was also spending more than $30,000 of those funds on designer clothes.

Yet even as Malema fell from his position of influence within the ANC, he continually worked to reinforce his connections to the party's more radical past. Before 2013, he hadn't had much success. When Malema cast his plans for nationalizing mines as a continuation of the Mandela family's legacy, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, Nelson Mandela's ex-wife, responded that she was not, like Malema, the type of populist who “exploits” the poor and uneducated in order to sustain “a luxury lifestyle and what we now call bling.”