The woman who stopped the MK party’s power takeover bid in KZN

Most people probably don’t know anything about the woman who prevented Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto Wesizwe (MK) party from taking over KwaZulu-Natal.

Mbali Shinga is a former dishwasher who worked her way through the ranks to become a restaurant manager, community worker and entrepreneur. Now she is the member of the executive council (MEC) for social development in KwaZulu-Natal.

Shinga recently spoke to Daily Maverick for an hour and 27 minutes.

Eighty minutes into the interview, tears streamed down her cheeks. Not because she was in the crosshairs of the biggest political party in KZN, or because she has been vilified and threatened.

She cried because she missed her mother, who died this year.

“I’m not on my own,” she whispered, wiping away her tears with a handkerchief, alluding to her family, friends and her late mother.

Some days, the grief is heavier than the politics. At times, it has felt like a far bigger challenge than living under a 24-hour police guard and standing up to MK and the president of her own National Freedom Party.

Shinga is all that stood between MK and a KZN takeover. This emerged during a showdown in the provincial legislature on 15 December, when MK tried to pass a motion of no confidence against Premier Thami Ntuli.

Belligerence

A single vote foiled it: Shinga’s. On the day, the people of KZN got a taste of their government-in-waiting, and for many, including Shinga, it was horrid.

The belligerence of traditionalists and tenderpreneurs in their bid to wrest control of KZN and its R150-billion-plus budget was foiled. But only after MK members yelled insults (many directed at Shinga), jostled with parliamentary opponents and sprayed water around the legislature.

Many felt it was a crass display of might-is-right. As MK’s MPLs disrupted the sitting, their gleeful party supporters in the public gallery egged them on. Police in numbers eventually outmuscled them and 36 MK MPLs were suspended for disorderly conduct (without pay), though they are contesting this.

MK opponents across the board slated the party’s behaviour. The IFP’s Mkhuleko Hlengwa summed up the sentiment of many when he said attacks on women in the legislature, namely Shinga and Speaker Nontembeko Boyce, were an assault on democracy.

“South Africa faces a deep tragedy of gender-based violence… If we want a rules-based society to be a reality, it must find expression in its leaders.”

Dangerous social media attacks

Vulgar slurs, insults and derogatory remarks directed at Boyce and Shinga may not have physically harmed them, but the sustained social media attacks were dangerous.

“Bullying is not political maturity. It is violence, and we must call it out for what it is.”

As the sole representative of the NFP in the legislature, Shinga was centre stage in a down-to-the-wire vote in the 80-member house. Hitherto largely unknown, she was thrust into the spotlight when she provided a majority of one.

Shinga defied NFP president Ivan Barnes, who had struck a deal with MK and the EFF to try to wrest control from the Government of Provincial Unity (GPU).

Ntuli’s IFP leads the GPU that includes the ANC, the DA and the NFP, represented by Shinga. Of the total 80 seats, they collectively have 41. MK has 37 and the EFF two.

Zuma appeared in the house before the disrupted vote and left chaos in his wake. GPU members sat dumbstruck in the face of a mob motion. Shinga stoically bore the brunt of catcalling and what she later described as “disgusting behaviour”.

“And I was supposed to work with those people (MK)!”

MK and the EFF, realising they would lose their motion of no confidence, opted not to vote, calling for a secret ballot due to security concerns about politically motivated threats. The irony was lost on no one in the legislature.

If anyone is under threat, it is Shinga, who has been the subject of laser-focused scrutiny. Shinga was not shaken and never wavered because “I am standing for justice and precedent”.

“This is down to the emancipation of women.” If this can happen to her, it will happen again.

Despite her valour, Shinga fears for her family. She has two children, a teen and a twenty-something, though she doesn’t talk about them to avoid putting them at risk.

She hails from Mtwalume on the KZN South Coast, the second of 10 children born to a homemaker and a sugar mill clerk. As the big sister, Shinga, now 51, got a job immediately after school to help support the family. She wears an oversized silver wristwatch, a gift from her eight surviving siblings.

As an apartheid-era waitress, she learnt the Spur menu in Afrikaans because the visiting Vaalies didn’t want to speak English, let alone Zulu. “So I knew everything from gebakte aartappels to skyfies – alles!”

Shinga’s passion for self-development found fertile ground in community work, leading to a job with the nongovernment agency Love Life, whose funders included Bill and Melinda Gates.

Rising through the ranks, she met the famous philanthropists and hosted Unicef goodwill ambassador Harry Belafonte during his trip to KZN.

When Zanele kaMagwaza-Msibi started the IFP breakaway NFP in 2011, Shinga was attracted to a party founded by a black woman.

​Kingmakers

​Fast forward to the 2024 national elections, Shinga’s dithering NFP won 19,548 votes of the 3.5 million cast in KZN, making the infamously fractious party KZN’s kingmaker.

The NFP failed to win enough support nationally to muster a single seat in the National Assembly, leaving Barnes without a paying job.

Shinga, top of the party’s list in KZN, was appointed social development MEC, a reward for the NFP’s support for the GPU.

Shinga became seriously involved in the NFP in 2016, when she was elected regional chair of the party on the KZN South Coast, while running a cleaning service business and an internet cafe. She was drawn to the NFP’s motto: “Nothing else but service delivery.”

The party has a patchy history. In the 2016 local government elections, it botched its registration and completed the paperwork in only one municipality nationwide, securing it a paltry 5,000 votes.

In 2019, kaMagwaza-Msibi had a stroke. She died in 2021, the year Shinga was elected to the party’s national executive committee.

In the 2021 local government elections, the NFP had a spectacular bounce-back, securing 157,000 votes in KZN municipalities.

At the time, the NFP had only one seat in the KZN legislature. Its sole MPL resigned to start his own political party, and Shinga was appointed to replace him in October 2022.

A newbie to Parliament, Shinga applied herself and raised her profile so that a year later, at the NFP’s KZN conference, she was elected chair. A few months later, in December 2023, the party held its national conference, bedevilled by infighting and court challenges.

Barnes emerged as party president, with Shinga’s support, but the NFP’s showing in the 2024 national elections was dismal.

Electoral analyst Wayne Sussman describes the party as on the wane. “It has been suggested that the NFP was a creation of Jacob Zuma (as an IFP splinter, it was successful and secured 288,000 votes in the 2014 national elections).

“This party has pockets of municipal support in KZN, but it will struggle unless it resurrects the organisational capacity it showed in 2014 and 2021.”

The NFP’s decision to join the GPU was pragmatic. “Rather be on the winning 41/80 side than in a stalemate of 40/40.”

For Sussman, the NFP’s GPU flip-flop “is about position and power”.

The NFP took a resolution to join the GPU last year, but Shinga was astounded to see Barnes on TV a year later, breaking the news that the party was supporting MK’s motion of no confidence.

“Imagine how I felt as a member of the GPU being told to caucus with the MK and EFF.” Barnes had no authority to change tack, “it was just his personal choice”.

Shinga describes NFP party management as “embarrassing… chaos”.

The animosity between her and Barnes is such that she can’t remember when they last met. She says he was always angling to oust her.

In July, Barnes was interdicted from proceeding with a disciplinary against Shinga – a move aimed at revising party lists to get him into the legislature.

Suspension letter

After the failed motion of no confidence Shinga received a letter suspending her for defying the party. She shot back with a lawyer’s letter, describing the suspension as procedurally irregular and a violation of due process.

The NFP also wrote to the legislature, asking to recall Shinga, but this was rejected on the grounds that it was unconstitutional.

Until she or Barnes can show who genuinely carries the party mandate, things are in limbo. Shinga admits the party is “highly factionalised”.

She is part combative, part conciliatory. If there were a vote tomorrow, she says her leadership role in the NFP would be reaffirmed.

That said, she’s aware that the struggle is tarnishing the party’s image and has called for cool heads. Voters don’t trust feuding politicians and public spectacles weaken the party’s (already dented) image.

In politics, it is every man (and woman) for themselves. In a weak and divided party like the NFP, Shinga could be accused of exactly the self-interest she blames Barnes for.

Staying in the GPU guarantees an MEC position with attendant perks. Does that lead to cosiness among the political elite?

During the heckled debate that preceded the failed motion of no confidence, MK members claimed Ntuli took his girlfriend on a state-sponsored jaunt to New York.

Shinga says the GPU cabinet (comprising her, and ANC and IFP ministers) is a feisty affair, and she doesn’t hold back. One cabinet colleague had this to say about her: “She’s like a mother in the cabinet. She calms things down. She’s measured and principled.”

Shinga says cabinet members are critical of each other. “I have never been quiet, and there are no kid gloves.”

For now, her single vote held the line against a hostile takeover, but it also exposed the cost of standing alone in a factionalised party in a volatile province.

Whether history judges her as principled or pragmatic may depend on what happens next – inside the NFP, inside the GPU, and in KZN. DM

Barnes was approached for comment early on 5 January and agreed to a 3pm telephone call on 5 January. At 3pm, he asked to reschedule to 6pm, but then did not answer the call. WhatsApp questions were also sent to Barnes. The article will be updated should comment be received.