[3] According to Bhengu, she became interested in politics during high school as a result of the apartheid-era Bantu Education system and particularly related policies on medium of instruction.
[7] In June 2004, the ANC reshuffled its parliamentary caucus and Bhengu swopped places with Yunus Carrim, becoming chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Provincial and Local Government.
[10][11] She later said that she had made the disclosure with her daughter's permission, as a response to her fellow MPs' impersonal and callous approach to policymaking.
[15][16] Bhengu was one of several ANC MPs who faced criminal charges for abusing parliamentary travel vouchers in the Travelgate scandal.
In April 2004, she accepted a plea deal and pled guilty to defrauding Parliament in respect of service benefits worth R43,000.
[20] Her candidacy was controversial, given her recent Travelgate conviction,[21] and the opposition Democratic Alliance said that it demonstrated that the ANC "actively condones corruption and holds local government voters in contempt" and called for her to withdraw.
"[22] Bhengu argued that she was being held to a double standard, pointing out that Hansie Cronje, Phillip Powell, and Brian Mitchell had been allowed to re-enter civic life:If the people who continue to call me a fraudster despite the fact that I have apologised and served my dues do not say the same thing to the people I have mentioned, it means that they are racists.
At the same conference, Bhengu was nominated to stand for election to the ANC National Executive Committee (NEC); her candidacy apparently had the support of the Zuma camp.
[38] Press suggested that she was vulnerable to a conflict of interest, since her portfolio committee was responsible for regulating the taxi industry and for overseeing one of SANTACO's donors, the Department of Transport.
[39][40] The Sowetan's reporting gave rise to an investigation by Parliament's ethics committee, which found in August 2012 that Bhengu had not contravened the code of conduct but which referred the potential conflict of interest to the Speaker's office.
[41][42] During the legislative term, Bhengu remained in office as SANCO president,[43] and in December 2012 she was re-elected to the ANC NEC, ranked eighth of the 80 members elected.
[48] However, ahead of the next general election in 2019, Bhengu was, in the Witness's phrase, "overlooked" on the ANC's party list;[49] she dropped to the near-unelectable rank of 175th.