I grew up in Extension 7 in Ikageng at a time when gangsterism seduced many young men. Gangs offered identity. They offered belonging. They offered a distorted version of unity.
I nearly joined.
The rituals were intimidating. The “number language” was complex (that thing should be studied as a science). Friends warned me I was gambling with my future. My Christian convictions clashed with criminality. But what ultimately drove me away was one brutal rule: solidarity fighting.
If one member fights, all must fight.
No questions. No investigation. No moral reflection.
It did not matter who was right. It did not matter who started the conflict. Loyalty required abandoning objectivity. It required suspending conscience. In that moment, I understood that gang unity is not unity at all — it is the organised death of independent thought.
I walked away.
Years later, I joined the African National Congress Youth League, inspired by the generational theme of Economic Freedom in Our Lifetime. The broader mission of the African National Congress — founded in 1912 to unite African people — spoke to something far greater than personal advancement. Politics, at its best, is about building a just society and uniting a fractured nation.
But what I encountered was not principled contestation. It was factionalism — institutionalised, entrenched and normalised.
We were told factions are merely lobby groups around leadership preferences. That is a comforting lie. Lobbying ends when conferences end. Factions do not. They harden. They consolidate. They outlive leadership battles and become permanent camps of blind allegiance.
And here is the uncomfortable truth: the culture of factions increasingly resembles the culture of gangs.
First, both operate through patronage hierarchies. Patrons are treated as untouchable. Advancement depends not on competence or integrity, but proximity and loyalty. Political leaders are elevated into quasi-deities. A profile picture becomes a declaration of allegiance. Public praise becomes currency. Critical thinking becomes betrayal.
Ubuntu teaches equality of human dignity. Christianity commands us to love our neighbour as ourselves. Factional politics demands the opposite — submission upward and hostility outward.
Second, factions practise their own version of solidarity fighting. When a faction member is under scrutiny, reflex replaces reason. Defence comes first; truth comes later — if it comes at all. This culture metastasised during the presidency of Jacob Zuma, when defending the leader became a test of revolutionary purity and objectivity was branded treachery.
We told ourselves it was discipline. It was not. It was decay.
The recent audio recordings involving the Deputy Provincial Secretary of the ANC in the North West illustrate the sickness. She speaks of alleged hitmen. Her tone reflects fear and grievance. Instead of principled engagement, the public discourse split predictably into camps: attackers with no comradely concern for her safety, and defenders who treat criticism itself as sacrilege.
One side howls. The other shields. Neither seeks truth.
Some defenders have even declared that comrades are not in the ANC to love each other but merely to run an organisation and government. That statement alone reveals how far we have drifted. The ANC was formed to unite African people — not to manufacture cold bureaucrats devoid of solidarity grounded in humanity. The National Democratic Revolution, adopted alongside the South African Communist Party, envisions a united, non-racial, non-sexist and prosperous society. Unity is not optional sentimentality; it is the strategic foundation of transformation.
But unity built on fear and patronage is counterfeit.
The electoral consequences are visible. The 2024 South African general election exposed a country retreating into identity silos. White-dominated areas leaned toward the Democratic Alliance and the Freedom Front Plus. In many coloured communities, the Patriotic Alliance surged. The uMkhonto we Sizwe Party consolidated support in regions sharing cultural affinity with its leader. The ANC, once the broad church that transcended race and region, is shrinking into yet another contestant in the marketplace of identity politics.
Why? Because a movement consumed by internal gangs cannot unite a nation.
Factionalism does not merely weaken electoral machinery; it corrodes moral authority. It replaces debate with intimidation. It replaces accountability with protection rackets. It rewards loyalty over competence. And when violence seeps into internal contests, it ceases to be metaphorical.
As local government elections approach, the stakes are higher than branch positions or conference outcomes. If gang logic continues to dominate movement politics, intra-party conflict will intensify and spill outward. A movement that once liberated a people risks becoming hostage to its own internal patronage networks.
Objectivity today is treated as naïveté. Principle is treated as disloyalty. To question your own faction is to invite marginalisation.
So be it.
Better marginalised with integrity than elevated through blind allegiance.
The unity of the movement is sacrosanct — but unity without conscience is merely organised conformity. If the ANC cannot distinguish between disciplined unity and gang-style solidarity fighting, it will not only lose elections. It will lose its historic mission.
And history is unforgiving to movements that forget why they were formed.
Mogale Matsose II writes in his personal capacity
