[6][7] 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.
[22][23] 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.
[32] 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".
[32] 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.
[33] His speech was interpreted as "a veiled attack" on former President Zuma and his supporters in the province, Zandile Gumede and Willies Mchunu.
[30][34] 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.
[35] 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.
[45] In May 2021, Ntuli got into a public spat with Mangosuthu Buthelezi, a Zulu prince and the former president of the opposition Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP).
A source later told the Daily Maverick that the faction backing the Taliban had first approached Ntuli to run against Zikalala as chairperson.
[56][57][58] In October, Ramaphosa's presidential campaign appeared to endorse a slate of Top Six candidates which excluded Ntuli.
[61] His own PEC in KwaZulu-Natal endorsed Phumulo Masualle, the former Premier of the Eastern Cape, for secretary general;[62] he described its stance as "baffling".
[63] Eyewitness News reported that he was at odds with the rest of the PEC partly because he had declined to run against Zikalala in July.
[64] Only two of eleven regions in KwaZulu-Natal supported his bid,[65] and he was not endorsed by the national leadership of the ANC Youth League.
[67] Eyewitness News suggested that Ntuli was secretly supported – in particular in acquiring media connections – by allies of Gauteng's Paul Mashatile.
[75] In March 2024, the ANC announced that Ntuli would stand as a candidate in the upcoming general election,[76] ranked 32nd on the party's national list.
[1] Pursuant to the election, he was sworn in as a member of the National Assembly, the lower house of the South African Parliament, on 14 June.