- Township communities continue to idolise tsotsis, admiring wealth, style, and power over morality.
- Spiritual beliefs and cultural practices are intertwined with material ambitions, normalising crime and shortcuts.
- The admiration of figures like Cat Matlala highlights a deeper societal pathology rooted in inequality, historical displacement, and moral ambiguity.
The appearance of Cat Matlala before the ad hoc parliamentary committee reopened yet another debate over the disturbing behaviour embedded in the fabric of black townships. Tsotsis are revered in these communities, and women openly express their undying love for hardened criminals. Some admire a “lovable, clean and good-smelling” man, while others are drawn to his outfits from international fashion houses.
This spectacle exposes a side of the black community, from KwaMashu to Mitchells Plain, that we often overlook, perhaps out of embarrassment. The mental wiring of many in the black community can be bewildering: ‘soft’ crimes are normalised and woven into social life. People flock to churches and izangoma to seek mahlatsi (luck) and umcebo (fortune), going to great lengths to fulfil their desires.
Many who have visited Durban beaches would attest to seeing stranded chickens roaming a dirty coastline littered with colourful candles, sealed brandy bottles, and other ritual goods. In some cases, the high-level rituals associated with ukuthwala involve human sacrifice. As the December holidays approach, stock theft and livestock sales typically spike, as individuals deposit their ‘requests’ for good fortune with ancestors, gods, and God.
For this reason, the surge in gambling and criminal activities in South Africa is not merely a matter of addiction; it is also embedded in social customs. The promise of algorithmic payouts on social media holds the same allure as young women twerking for their lives in front of cameras for ‘lucks’—oops, I mean likes and followers! Easy money and discounted goods drive many to cut corners.
Even when a taxi operator forgets to collect a fare, many remain silent, seeing this ‘soft’ crime as their luck: “O Bhungane bangibhekile!” Others attribute their fortune to God: “Modimo o phala baloi!” Anyone who succeeds in this murky world of magic, whether a tsotsi or politician, is showered with praise and admiration. ‘Mlungu’, ‘lenyora’, ‘guluva’, and ‘ntja ye game’ are some of the superlatives reserved for those who have made it, legitimately or otherwise.
It does not matter whether one leads a clean or criminal life; what counts is money and possessions. Those who drive German cars, buy tons of booze, or wear expensive brands become instant icons among women and men alike. The adoration of Matlala and the general tolerance for corruption can be understood in this context—but definitely not as a celebration of poverty. Many of us have a love-hate relationship with hardship. The antithesis of success is rarely hard work; more often, it is humble beginnings and divine intervention from God or amadlozi.
Nonetheless, the emerging pattern is clear: people are always hoping for a miracle or a freebie.
A historical worship of thugs
My friend Busani Ngcaweni, the Inanda Esquire, asked me to pen a piece historicising our faithful worship of township thugs. I have to stick to the script before I get carried away, as the Msomi Gang and other notorious figures come to mind.
The cultural adoration of the thug is not a new TikTok phenomenon but a deeply historicised pattern. To historicise our faithful worship of township thugs is to recognise that the tsotsi figure has long been a complex anti-hero. The early tsotsis of the 1940s and 1960s, with their slick American zoot suits and command of the streets, were not merely criminals but auteurs of an alternative masculinity. They owned the night, controlled the shebeens, and carried a swagger that defied the state-mandated humiliation of the black man. They were agents of their own destiny in a world designed to deny them agency.
Since those early years, figures like the infamous Msomi Gang, operating primarily in Natal and later Soweto, were simultaneously feared and admired. The Msomi Gang gained notoriety not just for their violence but for their flamboyant style, apparent defiance of colonial authority, and selective generosity towards their communities—a complex bandit-hero dynamic.
While their violence was rightly feared, the folklore around their leader, Mzimkhulu “Msomi” Mpanza, painted him as a cunning, almost supernatural figure who outwitted the system. This narrative of the brilliant, ruthless individual triumphing over overwhelming force is powerful and seductive, especially for a community that has long felt overpowered. That seed of admiration never died. It merely mutated.
The erosion of traditional authority
This historical context was compounded by the erosion of traditional social structures. The authority of elders, once the bedrock of communal morality, was fractured by the migrant labour system and the economic pressures of township life. Into this vacuum stepped a new priesthood: the ones with cash. The currency of respect shifted from wisdom and integrity to material wealth and the power it represented.
The gangster, the hustler, became the new chief, the new patriarch, because he could provide, protect, and project an image of invincibility. He was the one who could bypass the dead end of a factory job or clerk’s wage and access the glittering world of consumerism that apartheid dangled just out of reach.
A democracy-era tsotsi with many faces
After 1994, when political liberation failed to translate into economic freedom, the gangster archetype found new life. The democracy-era tsotsi is no longer framed as a political rebel but as an economic rebel. Today, he is a hustler who has ‘figured out the game’ while everyone else waits in line for emancipation that never arrives. In this logic, the tsotsi embodies a new fantasy: a shortcut through the ruins of inequality. He is proof that “the system” can be bypassed.
What makes today’s admiration more disturbing is how normalised it has become. Unlike older generations who respected gangsters out of fear or necessity, the new generation celebrates them out of aspiration. The boundary between criminality and success has collapsed into pure spectacle. Today, we follow them, imitate them, admire their drip, and post their quotes on WhatsApp statuses. Their lives, no matter how violent, are turned into motivational content. Beauty and the Bester!
The spiritual economy of admiration
The moral confusion runs so deep that even legitimate success becomes suspect unless accompanied by noise, expensive clothes, loud cars, flamboyant drinking, and exaggerated generosity. Quiet success is disrespected, and visible excess is revered. Township communities not only romanticise thugs but reproduce the psychology of the ‘kleva’. The obsession with shortcuts, miracles, and instant gratification is not limited to criminals.
This brings us to the critical intersection of spirituality and materialism, a uniquely potent cocktail in the post-apartheid era. Spiritual frameworks, such as belief in amadlozi (ancestors) and divine intervention, have been co-opted into the frantic pursuit of delayed modernity. Arguably, our tolerance for rampant corruption also falls within this continuum.
The ritual on the beach is not just about connecting with ancestors. It is a direct request for a BMW, a house in the suburbs, or a lucrative government tender. The divine is no longer just a source of peace or protection; it is now viewed as the ultimate venture capitalist. This is fertile ground in which the modern figures of the ‘blesser’ and the ‘guluva’ thrive. They are living proof that the ritual ‘worked’.
The tragic romance of the tsotsi
But when a politician, whose known salary could never account for his fleet of cars and multiple properties, is not shunned but celebrated as an ‘ntja ya game’, it signals moral collapse. The end result (wealth) sanctifies the means, no matter how corrupt.
To dismiss the adoration of tsotsis as mere foolishness or moral decay is to miss the point entirely. It is a symptom of a deeper societal pathology: a legacy of systemic violence, a crisis of legitimate authority, and a spiritual crisis in which faith has been harnessed to the chariot of hyper-capitalism. The ‘stunt’ that Dareleen James pulled stems from frustration, as her black community is intoxicated by mzulo (the quest for quick riches).
The township’s love affair with the tsotsi is a tragic romance, born from the rubble of a fractured past and fuelled by anxieties about the present, the future, and eternity. This is the story of a community searching for saviours and heroes in a landscape where traditional heroes have failed. In their desperation, they find them in the dangerous, glamorous, and destructive arms of the outlaw, who promises the world, even if he has to steal it to give it to you. “Indoda must”, exclaim our sisters as they urge brothers to go find.
The enduring appeal of thekleva
In conclusion, the faithful worship of the township thug continues because the tsotsi is seen as having solved the core problem democracy has failed to solve: the problem of poverty and power. The admiration is not for criminality itself, but for the ability to escape the clutches of economic fate by any means necessary. A ‘kleva’ is seen as the one who has completed the final, tragic chapter of post-apartheid disillusionment.
Mzimkhulu “Msomi” Mpanza no longer wears Darks of London or Florsheims, and he no longer drives a Six Mabona. The guluva no longer spins ‘isandla semfene’. The new hero parades in Christian Louboutins, carries plenty of mashankura, drinks cognac, and dines in Dubai—a Fanonian reconstruction of wounded masculinity, maybe?
Siya yi banga le economy!
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