Mbali Ntuli (born c. 28 March 1988) is a South African politician and a former member of the Democratic Alliance (DA).
She resigned as a member of the KwaZulu-Natal Legislature in March 2022, where she served as the DA KZN Spokesperson on Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (CoGTA).
Ntuli holds a Bachelor of Social Science degree from Rhodes University,[1] and runs a taxi business.
[6] Due to these duties, Ntuli announced in August 2014 that she would stand down as youth leader,[7] to be replaced by Yusuf Cassim.
[8][2] In 2018, she left the Legislature to take up a staff position for the DA in KZN, as the party's Provincial Campaign Director (PCD).
[11] The relationship between Helen Zille, Federal Leader of the Democratic Alliance from 2007 to 2015, and Mbali Ntuli, was characterised by disagreement and acrimony.
[13] Ntuli faced internal disciplinary charges in 2017, based on allegations that she in December 2016 "liked" a comment on social media, in response to an article about Zille's controversial tweets in 2016, that called Zille "racist";[14] and that she accused the DA of "inconsistency" in the way it treats contraventions of its social media policy.
[12][15] Acting Western Cape DA leader Bonginkosi Madikizela brought the allegations to the party's attention.
[14] Despite advice from the DA legal commission that charges not proceed because they could reflect poorly on the party, federal executive chairman James Selfe maintained that it was the federal executive's duty to investigate the matter in order to be consistent with the way that the party addressed social media faux pas such as Zille's and Dianne Kohler Barnard's.
"[19] A month before the Federal Congress, the DA set rules that prevented candidates from running public campaigns.
When there is a situation like that in a political party, a culture of top-down management becomes dominant, compelling many to either fall in line or risk being either isolated, purged or frustrated into resigning.