By the end of his tenure in that position, he had broken ranks with the SACP's national leadership to emerge as a political opponent of President Jacob Zuma.
From February 2011 to May 2014, Masondo represented the ANC in the Limpopo Provincial Legislature, where he was Member of the Executive Council for Finance until July 2013 under Premier Cassel Mathale.
[3] After high school, he attended Giyani College of Education, where he joined the South African Students Congress, becoming its provincial chairperson in 1996 and its national deputy president in 1997.
[7] His dissertation, about post-apartheid automotive industrial policy in South Africa, was published in the Review of African Political Economy.
In its early years, the YCL, under the leadership of Masondo and general secretary Buti Manamela, was aligned to opponents of incumbent President Thabo Mbeki, and therefore to supporters of presidential challenger Jacob Zuma.
In 2006, for example, when Mazibuko Jara wrote a controversial article questioning the SACP's support for Zuma, Masondo responded in an article called Red is the Colour of our Flag: In Defence of the Rule of Law, in which he argued that Zuma's corruption trial arose primarily from "a political agenda" related to the ANC's succession battle.
[18] He was booed by Manamela's pro-Zuma supporters at the conference, but he dismissed the heckling as part of a "general pattern of degeneration in the youth movement".
[19] His appointment was unexpected but was presumed to be a reflection of his increasing closeness to Zuma's opponents, who included Mathale and his allies in the ANC Youth League.
Later in December 2011, Masondo was elected to the Provincial Executive Committee of the Limpopo ANC; he was the second-most popular candidate, closely trailing Lydia Komape.
[26] According to Malema, he, Masondo, and Floyd Shivambu, contemplating how they would respond to their alienation in the national ANC, had mooted the idea of establishing a new political party:We had a very lengthy discussion.
[3] In April 2015, he joined the Automotive Industry Development Centre, an agency of the Gauteng Provincial Government, as acting chief executive officer; he was appointed permanently to that position in November.
[35] In a committee meeting shortly after the conference, it was reportedly Masondo who first raised the prospect of removing Jacob Zuma from office as president, a motion which came to fruition in February.
[36][37] Also in the aftermath of the conference, Masondo was appointed as deputy chairperson of the ANC's subcommittee on political education, deputising Nathi Mthethwa.
[48] Mboweni also appointed him to lead the ministry's pro-growth structural economic reform programme, which the Business Day viewed as a wise choice because of Masondo's closeness to the left.
[3] In July 2020, the ANC's internal Integrity Commission recommended that Masondo should step aside from his government and party responsibilities after he was involved in a perceived abuse of power.
[50] During a subsequent investigation by the Commission for Gender Equality,[51] Masondo admitted to having had protected sex with Lebitse on one occasion but said that they had not been in a romantic relationship, that he was not responsible for her pregnancy, and that he had not encouraged her to have an abortion.
However, we think that you showed poor judgment and that you should have known that involving the Hawks in a domestic matter would open you up to accusations that you were abusing your power and your access to state resources.
At the SACP's next national congress in Boksburg in July 2022, Masondo made what the Sunday Times called "a spectacular comeback" in the party.
[59] He performed poorly in the nominations stage of the contest,[60] and he was expected to split the vote with Mantashe; both were viewed as supporters of President Ramaphosa.
[61] When the ANC's 55th National Conference was held in December, Masondo lost resolutely in the chairmanship race; he received only 282 votes against Mantashe's 2,062 and Stan Mathabatha's 2,018.