The NIC was certainly not a tight grouping of activists all reading from the same script. It was criss-crossed − some might say doublecrossed − with leadership splits, personality clashes, and contestations over tactics and strategies, the fallout from which reached into the broader liberation movement. The issue of a cabal within the NIC, with accusations of secret meetings and factions, captured public attention in the mid- 1980s. There are contested narratives as one follows different groupings, ideological streams, and generational- and personality-driven impulses, although it is difficult to pin down exactly who belonged to the different factions and how they operated.

In examining this issue, we took cognisance of Yunus Carrim's contention that there is little to be gained by ‘personalising political events’. He explained:

There were differences over strategy and ideology, but can personality be totally ignored? For example, I.C. Meer shared office space with Mewa Ramgobin in Verulam. Iain Edwards observed that the two ‘spoke, argued, and lunched nearly every day, each on their side of a stable door, the top half open. Yet Meer never mentions Mewa Ramgobin once in his memoir. Are there are lifelong enmities in this observation? What drove it?’ Edwards, who conducted interviews with Ramgobin and with MK soldier and Robben Island prisoner Natoo Babenia, was struck by the deep-seated ‘sectarianism’ within the NIC: