She was previously Mpumalanga's Member of the Executive Council for Arts, Sports, Culture and Recreation from 2019 to 2021 before serving as the MEC for Social Development from 2021 until 2024.
A nurse by training, Ntshalintshali is a former member of the African National Congress (ANC) Youth League and entered government in 2006 as a local councillor in Emalahleni.
[20][21][22] In February 2021, in a reshuffle of the Executive Council, Ntshalintshali traded portfolios with Thandi Shongwe, becoming MEC for Social Development.
While she was making this announcement, a scuffle broke out, in which certain ANC members reportedly attacked Ntshalintshali and her bodyguard, including with a chair; two policemen were also injured,[25] and one attendee said that the police had to fire rubber bullets to disperse the meeting.
[32][33][34][35] Ntshalintshali continued to maintain that Ngwenya had assaulted her and said in the aftermath, "The ANC cannot claim to fight gender-based violence while they cannot protect us who are inside the organisation.
[36][37] According to local observers, the attack on Ntshalintshali at the Mbombela meeting in July was connected to broader factional confrontation in the Mpumalanga ANC;[38] in August 2019, she added two additionally bodyguards to her security detail.
[28][40] Instead, she supported the so-called "NdlovuChirwa" campaign, led by Mandla Ndlovu and Muzi Chirwa, who included Ntshalintshali on their proposed slate of leadership candidates.
[41][42] Fellow MEC Peter Nyoni said that Ntshalintshali's opposition to Mtsweni-Tsipane had led to her "being bullied by those who want the organisation [the ANC] to serve their interest at all cost".
[40] In August 2019, City Press reported that relations between Ntshalintshali and Mtsweni-Tsipane were so poor that the government's Executive Council had not held a single cabinet meeting in the two-and-a-half months since it was constituted.
[38] The Mpumalanga ANC's elective conference was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic and related lockdown, leaving Ntshalintshali to continue as acting Provincial Secretary throughout 2020 and 2021.
In April 2022, when the conference was held, the Ndlovu–Chirwa faction, renamed "Focus", prevailed, securing the election of its entire slate of candidates.
[43] Ntshalintshali was re-elected Deputy Provincial Secretary, this time deputising Muzi Chirwa; she won a total of 458 votes from the 700–800 delegates present.
[52] The reports about the protection force were particularly controversial because Emalahleni was undergoing financial problems and because the relevant security contractor was owned by the same man who had received another controversial multimillion-rand tender in 2014, on that occasion to protect senior municipal employees from protests by the South African Municipal Workers' Union.
[51][52] In 2021, after Ntshalintshali had left Emalahleni and become an MEC, the Mpumalanga provincial government commissioned a forensic investigation into alleged improprieties that occurred in the council under her tenure.
[54] Both the DA and the Economic Freedom Fighters, another political party, had earlier opened a criminal case against her on similar grounds.
[62] Ntshalintshali denied that she had had an affair with the man and said that the leak was part of an organised attempt to discredit her ahead of the Mpumalanga ANC's elective conference.