A South African court has sentenced a popular poet to 13 years in prison, after he was found guilty of robbing a Pretoria bank in 1997.

Mzwakhe Mbuli, who is known as the People's Poet, was sentenced along with two co-accused.

He insists that he was framed because of allegations he was making about drug-running among senior politicians, and says he will be appealing against his sentence.

The judge in the case found Mbuli and his two bodyguards guilty of the robbery after police said they discovered more than $2,000 in cash, pistols, a hand-grenade and ammunition in their car.

It looks like an open-and-shut case - but Mzwakhe Mbuli insists that he and his co-accused are the victims of an elaborate conspiracy involving the police and the government.

Mbuli claims that he was framed in an attempt to silence him as he was about to make public embarrassing allegations of drug-running among senior South African politicians.

Outspoken

As an outspoken poet, he has found life uncomfortable both under the old apartheid regime and the new African National Congress government.

Some will remember him in South Africa for the poetry recital he gave at President Nelson Mandela's inauguration five years ago.

But since then, he has had a troubled relationship with the ANC. Poetic to the very last, when his guilty verdict was handed down, Mbuli said that "in an environment of lies, the truth becomes a stranger".