[3] Her family were supporters of the African National Congress (ANC), and her grandfather and uncle had been members of Umkhonto we Sizwe during apartheid.
[3] In 2016, she was transferred to the ANC's parliamentary caucus in the National Assembly, the lower house of the South African Parliament.
[2][3] After the May 2019 general election, the outgoing Chief Whip, Jackson Mthembu, was appointed to the cabinet as Minister in the Presidency.
[7][8] Mhlauli and Maimela's NYTT replaced a former task team, led by Tandi Mahambehlala as convenor and Sibongile Besani as coordinator, which had been appointed after Collen Maine's leadership corps was disbanded in 2019; Mahambehlala and Besani had been trying unsuccessfully since then to hold an elective conference.
[9] In subsequent weeks Mhlauli argued that the ANC Youth League was in disarray because of "extreme factionalism and that sort of cultish leadership where if you disagree, you get disbanded", a phenomenon that she said had been intensified by ANC leaders' habit of using the league "as a pocket knife in the factional battles of the mother body".
She was criticised for this apparent deviation from the ANC's principle of democratic centralism, but she continued to express public and unapologetic support for Ramaphosa.
Mhlauli had long been viewed as a possible candidate for the Youth League presidency,[6] and in 2022 she had overtly launched a campaign for her election to the leadership.
[18] However, after Mhlauli was elected to the National Executive Committee of the mainstream ANC, she withdrew from contention for the league presidency, saying that it "would not make political sense" for her to continue her campaign.
In that month, the National Working Committee of the mainstream ANC announced that Mhlauli's NYTT would be disbanded and replaced by a new task team.
[20] Ahead of the May 2024 general election, Mhlauli stood as an ANC candidate, ranked 22nd on the party's national list.