The Gangster Leagues of Cape Town
South Africa's most successful footballer, Benni McCarthy, is never shy about the tough parts of his working-class roots.
I consider Benni South Africa's most successful footballer of all time, so I have been fascinated by his story. That he is from Cape Town and grew up 10 minutes from where I did, though he is eight younger, contributes to the fascination.
His career achievements are covered: Benni has scored the most goals for the national team, Bafana Bafana, thirty-one in eighty international appearances. It included scoring South Africa’s first-ever World Cup goal against Denmark in France ’98. David Julio, a black footballer from Johannesburg, won a UEFA Cup Winners Cup medal in 1964 with Sporting Lisbon. McCarthy took it one step further: he is still the first and only South African to win UEFA Champions League and Intercontinental Cup winners’ medals. Benni won both titles playing for Porto FC, managed by Jose Mourinho, in 2004. In retirement, he took to coaching. First in South Africa: As manager of Cape Town City in the Premier Soccer League. He was fired after two years in 2019. After sitting out a season, Amazulu F.C. hired him. Amazulu was on the verge of relegation when he took over halfway through the season in 2020 and coached the club to second place behind Mamelodi Sundowns, the dominant club in the league in the last decade. The next season, he qualified Amazulu for the African Champions League group stages but was fired anyway. Not long after, in June 2022, Manchester United in the English Premier League named Benni his first team forwards coach.
As a political researcher and writer, I became fascinated with the politics of sports in late apartheid South Africa, particularly in the 1980s and 1990s. This period, marked by mass movements and political repression, saw the violent backdrop to the “miracle” transition to democracy and the rise of gangs amid apartheid’s corruption. This is also the period when Benni’s career started and he was at his best. He began his career with a club run by members of his family, Young Pirates, and played for another club, Crusanders, in Hanover Park township, where he grew up. But he was also playing in what was known as the gangster leagues of Cape Town before starring for a local second division team, Seven Stars, and a brief career with a PSL team, Cape Town Spurs, before he went on to Ajax Amsterdam, Celta Vigo, Porto, Blackburn Rovers, and West Ham United, before returning to end his career at Orlando Pirates. This is also how I wrote nearly 4,000 words about the gangster leagues for the British quarterly football magazine, The Blizzard. The gangster leagues were well-run and funded competitions organized in Cape Town’s coloured working-class townships in the 1980s and 1990s.
As I point out in The Blizzard piece, I don’t judge the gangster leagues or the people who organized and bankrolled them: “During apartheid, the law appeared as repression rather than a legitimate way to order social life for the majority of South Africa. In this context, gangs or criminals often stepped in to perform the social functions the government could not or would not provide.”
In any case, I enjoy football podcasts. In early December, Benni, now based in Scotland with his wife and children, went on a media blitz in South Africa, where he visited as an "ambassador" for Carling Black Label. In his role with Carling, Benni did several interviews with radio stations, podcasts, and blogs, most focused on local football. South African football journalism is notoriously lacking in quality, so wading through these interviews has been a bit of a chore. The same repetitive questions were asked—mainly about Benni’s past controversies, like his fallout with Bafana Bafana (which has already been well covered), his thoughts on the current crop of players in the men's club competition, the PSL (he last coached in South Africa for Amazulu in 2022 before resurfacing as a forwards coach at Manchester United, so he doesn't know these players even when he pretended to), and where he plans to go next (he spoke about the MLS, though in recent days, rumors have surfaced that he’s taken the job as Kenya's men's national team coach).
The one notable exception was the controversial podcaster MacG. During their interview on his streaming show, "Podcast and Chill with MacG," things occasionally veered into sensational territory. MacG, ever the provocateur, clearly wanted to get some “viral moments,” including probing into Benni’s personal life—and Benni, ever the media-savvy performer, indulged him without giving away too much.
However, the focus on Benni’s early life stood out, shedding new light on his upbringing.
One thing I had not heard publicly before was that Benni’s father, Dudley, had spent time in jail. Benni didn’t say the crime, and MacG didn’t prod. He shared how he would visit his father at Victor Verster Prison outside Paarl with his mother.
Benni spoke about this without shame and seemed to want to share this.
I wasn’t surprised by this. Benni spoke about something very matter-of-fact and a “normal” fact in Cape Town. As feminist scholar Gabeba Baderoon, who studied the legacy of slavery and prisons in Cape Town, has pointed out, “incarceration figures show that colored men are imprisoned at twelve times the rate of white men, and twice the rate of black men.”
Benni also revealed that Dudley had been well-acquainted with Bok American, who ran the local “gangster league” team, Brazil, in Hanover Park. This is where some pro scouts first spotted Benni. I had never encountered his father’s role in his joining Brazil, so this and the jail story were news to me.
Benni hinted that his father might have influenced him to join Brazil, which led to his being noticed by Seven Stars.
Despite these connections, Benni made it clear that he felt more affection and admiration for his mother, stating that his goal in life was to avoid emulating his father. I suspect this emphasis on his mother might also be linked to something more profound. In a 2016 interview with the Sunday Times, Benni accused his late father, who passed away in 2008 from diabetes, of abusing his mother. In that context, this interview helped clarify some of Benni’s complicated feelings toward his father, something I had suspected but hadn't confirmed.