Mdumiseni Ntuli

Mdumiseni Ntuli (born March 1979) is a South African politician who represented the African National Congress (ANC) in the KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Legislature from May 2016 to July 2018.

Mdumiseni Ntuli was born in March 1979.

His family is from rural KwaXimba outside Cato Ridge in KwaZulu-Natal.

The area is a longstanding stronghold of the African National Congress (ANC), Ntuli's political party, and his family has been described as influential in ANC politics in the area: both his uncle, Bheki, and his brother, Thembo, are ANC politicians in KwaZulu-Natal.

Thembo was regional secretary of the ANC Youth League in eThekwini and in April 2022 was elected deputy chairperson of the ANC's eThekwini region, running on a slate aligned to Zandile Gumede.

Mdumiseni was educated at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, where he became active in student politics.

In 2004, while in the third year of his Bachelor of Laws degree, he was president of the student representative council on the university's Pietermaritzburg campus.

He holds a Master's in political studies from the university.

Around 2008, he left KwaZulu-Natal for Johannesburg, where he worked at the ANC's headquarters, Luthuli House, for a decade.

For the first year, he was a national administrator for the ANC; he later became an administrator for the ANC Youth League and then a national organiser for the ANC.

Simultaneously, Ntuli, like his brother, was a member of the ANC Youth League.

In 2014, he stood as a candidate for election as provincial chairperson of the KwaZulu-Natal Youth League; his candidacy was endorsed by the leadership of the league's largest region, eThekwini.

Later that year, he announced his candidacy for election as secretary of the national Youth League, a more senior position; he ran on a slate aligned to league presidential candidate Pule Mabe.

However, neither the provincial league nor the national league went ahead with their leadership elections in 2014; by the time they were held in 2015, Ntuli had turned 36 and was too old to be eligible for Youth League membership.

By that time, there were rumours that he was allied with Sihle Zikalala, then the provincial secretary of the ANC in KwaZulu-Natal, and that Zikalala hoped to promote Ntuli to a more senior position in the party or in the KwaZulu-Natal legislature.

A former member of the ANC Youth League, Ntuli has been a member of the Provincial Executive Committee of the KwaZulu-Natal ANC since 2015 and is the committee's former spokesman.

He also spent a decade working for the ANC as an administrator and organiser at its national headquarters at Luthuli House.

Ntuli was elected to the Provincial Executive Committee (PEC) of the ANC in KwaZulu-Natal at its seventh elective conference in 2015. He also became the PEC's spokesperson.

He won in a vote against Super Zuma, who had been elected to the position in 2015, by a margin of over 200 votes among about 1,700 delegates.

He was carried to the podium on the shoulders of supporters when the result was announced.

Super Zuma had reportedly been the preferred candidate of controversial former national President Jacob Zuma, who is also from KwaZulu-Natal and whom he had fiercely supported; the Daily Maverick therefore described Ntuli's election as a serious blow to former President Zuma.

At that time, the Daily Maverick said that Ntuli "appears to be very much in the middle of the road between the two main groups [pro-Zuma and anti-Zuma], rather than a diehard supporter of either".

The night before the conference opened at Durban University of Technology, Ntuli had addressed a so-called "cadre's forum" with remarks that suggested support for the ANC renewal agenda of incumbent President Cyril Ramaphosa, warning that some people within the ANC would resist the party's renewal.

His speech was interpreted as "a veiled attack" on former President Zuma and his supporters in the province, Zandile Gumede and Willies Mchunu.

Ntuli's election was understood to be the result of his inclusion on an informal slate known as the "unity" or "zebra" slate, which had been negotiated between the pro-Zuma and pro-Ramaphosa factions to ensure adequate representation for both.

The Mail & Guardian said that Ntuli had become "an obvious choice" for the slot, partly because he was viewed as acceptable by both factions and partly because of the organisational skill he had displayed as a member of the provincial task team. An opposing slate, the so-called "status quo" slate, lobbied for the re-election of the entire disbanded leadership as elected in 2015.

Sources told City Press that Ntuli had also been invited, and had declined, to serve as deputy chairperson on the status quo slate, an arrangement that would have allowed Super Zuma to gain the secretary post unopposed.

His candidacy received strong support from the province's ANC Youth League, a leading supporter of the unity slate, which had nominated him as part of its campaign for a "generational mix" in the new provincial leadership – Ntuli was still in his 30s at the time.

In his opening address to the conference, national ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule had urged young leaders to be patient and allow themselves to be "guided" and "nurtured", which Ntuli's supporters interpreted as directed at Ntuli and described as an attempt to "decampaign" him.

In May 2016, he was additionally elected as a Member of the KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Legislature, filling a casual vacancy.

However, he and the other members of the PEC, including Zikalala as chairperson, lost their party positions prematurely in late 2017 when the high court found that electoral irregularities had taken place at the 2015 conference.

He left the legislature to serve as Provincial Secretary of the ANC's KwaZulu-Natal branch, an office he held between 2018 and 2022.

The PEC was suspended and the running of the provincial party was entrusted to a provincial task team appointed by the ANC National Executive Committee in January 2018; Ntuli was appointed as one of its sixteen members.

Ntuli was elected provincial secretary of the ANC in KwaZulu-Natal in July 2018 when, after delays caused by legal challenges, the province held its eighth elective conference to elect a new leadership.

Although Ntuli's name was mentioned for the highly contested secretary position, he was not formally nominated in advance and was nominated from the floor of the conference by the ANC Youth League.

Ntuli served as provincial secretary for a single term between 2018 and 2022, working alongside Zikalala, who was re-elected unopposed as provincial chairperson at the 2018 conference.

Throughout his term, one of the KwaZulu-Natal ANC's overriding preoccupations was the ongoing legal challenges faced by former President Zuma, who was charged with corruption and later with contempt of court.

The fairly pro-Zuma PEC led by Ntuli resolved that Zuma should participate in the ANC's campaign in KwaZulu-Natal ahead of the 2019 general election; defending the decision, Ntuli said that Zuma "remains a darling of many people in this country, not just in KZN".

The PEC also resolved that ANC members should rally outside the courthouse to support Zuma during his trial, though Ntuli told the media that such support did not carry "anti-president" (that is, anti-Ramaphosa) implications.

In May 2021, at the beginning of Zuma's corruption trial, Ntuli accompanied Zikalala to the Pietermaritzburg High Court, where Zikalala assured a crowd of supporters gathered outside that in the provincial ANC "we stand with President Zuma, even today".