Originally a member of the African National Congress (ANC), he joined the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) in 1990 and then the United Democratic Movement (UDM) in 1999.
[1] While teaching, and partly due to his admiration of Albert Luthuli,[2] he became involved in anti-apartheid activism as a member of the African National Congress (ANC).
[1] After the Sharpeville uprising of 1960,[2] as the ANC was banned amid a wave of repression by the apartheid state, Mzimela left South Africa to go into exile abroad, spending time in Czechoslovakia, Germany, and various African countries.
[2] However, Mark Gevisser pointed out that Mzimela appeared in the American media as an ANC representative, arguing in favour of sanctions against apartheid, as late as 1987.
Gevisser suggested that Mzimela's change in attitude was the result of his experiences in Kenya, as well as an argument he had with his ANC superior in New York, Johnny Makathini, shortly before leaving for the mission.
Mzimela returned to South Africa later the same year and met Mangosuthu Buthelezi, the leader of the KwaZulu bantustan and of the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP).
[3] The interim constitution entitled the IFP to representation in a multi-party Government of National Unity, and newly elected President Nelson Mandela appointed Mzimela to his cabinet as Minister of Correctional Services.
[14] Although Mzimela remained an ordinary Member of Parliament and of the IFP, there was rampant speculation that he would leave the party, possibly to join the ANC.
[14] In subsequent months, Mzimela was subject to an internal disciplinary inquiry, which ended in 1999 when the IFP found him guilty of having brought the party into disrepute.
[16] The day after his expulsion from the IFP, Mzimela announced that he would join the United Democratic Movement (UDM), which had recently been founded by Bantu Holomisa as a breakaway from the ANC.
[19] Mzimela had apparently used the UDM's parliamentary funds to pay his domestic worker's salary, as well as to make out a total of R12,000 in cheques to his wife.
[20] The UDM said that it would also lay criminal charges against him, and Holomisa told a press conference, "There is only one way for him and that [is] that he must be taken to the prison ships he once proposed when he was Minister of Correctional Services".
[1] After leaving Parliament in 2001, he retired to the suburbs of Atlanta, where he was an associate priest at St Bartholomew's Church and a lecturer in religious studies at Agnes Scott College.