OPINION: What is it with powerful men and sexual temptation

What is it with powerful men and sexual temptation, asks Nadine Dreyer

'Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.' Little has changed since this observation was made, and this witticism remains universally appropriate.

What politicians get up to in the course of their working day is often startling, but the activities that don't make it onto their key performance areas really stretch the mind.

South Africa has had its fair share of reprobates in high places. The exploits of our president, Jacob Zuma, are too well known to bear repeating. He is a veteran at what goes on beneath all that high thread count.

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Then there's our new finance minister, Malusi Gigaba. In this era of junk status he should be focusing his energy on managing the country's purse strings; yet Gigaba's predilection for G-strings has made way too many headlines.

The latest political heavyweight to take his eye off the ball is Minister in the Presidency Jeff Radebe, who, the Sunday Times reveals this week, sent some highly inappropriate SMSes to a subordinate.

In the course of their exchanges, Radebe requested explicit pictures of the young woman's private parts.

She sent Radebe pictures of herself taking a bath and later of her naked breasts.

In one electronic communication, Radebe asks that the woman should "take one down", which she claims is a request for a picture of her private parts.

After several more SMSes the minister types: "C.l.i.t is requested".

This kind of exchange between employees would raise eyebrows in the basement of the Titty Twister strip club, let alone in the hallowed corridors of power.

The fact that a subordinate participated in dirty talk does not detract from the power relationship between the two. He was the boss, and bosses should know better.

Dear Minster Radebe, at this point please don't reach for your lawyer's contact details.

We are not suggesting that you went any further than some highly inappropriate communication with a subordinate. But what is it with powerful men and sexual relations?

When he wasn't lopping off Gauls' heads and trying to anoint himself emperor of the republic, Julius Caesar liked to keep the mattress springs oiled. He even got intimate with Cleopatra while the missus was sulking back in Rome.

WATCH South Africa reacts to Jeff Radebe’s sexting request

In between building Versailles - his own Nkandla - Louis XIV pursued countless women: single or married, aristocratic or common. As the apex male in 17th-century France he considered this his divine right.

There are countless other examples of politicians dilly-dallying. Notorious womaniser John F Kennedy would tell anybody who would listen that "If I don't have sex every day, I get a headache".

Good-time girl Christine Keeler's fling with a cabinet minister rocked the British establishment in the 1960s and we all know what president Bill Clinton meant by "not having sexual relations" with a certain intern.

Is it inevitable that power, ambition and an oversupply of testosterone go together? Or is it just that it's harder for flawed mortals to hide under the glare of the spotlight?

No matter the complexities of the underlying psychology, one thing is certain: wherever there are politicians, expect one man, one grope.