Nqaba Bhanga


Bennet Mzwenqaba Bhanga, known as Nqaba Bhanga, is a South African politician. He is the current Provincial Leader of the Democratic Alliance in the Eastern Cape and the party's mayoral candidate for Nelson Mandela Bay. He is also the former Leader of the Official Opposition in the Eastern Cape Provincial Legislature, a former Member of the Mayoral Committee for Human Settlements in the Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Municipality, a former member of Parliament, and the DA's former Shadow Minister of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs.

Biography

He was born in KwaZakhele, Port Elizabeth on 28 August 1977. It was at the KwaZakhele High School that he first got involved in student politics. He was elected the regional chair of the Congress of South African Students.
Bhanga joined the African National Congress and became the party's Nelson Mandela Bay Youth Leader, and SRC President of the Port Elizabeth Technikon where he obtained his first qualification in Public Administration. He later on achieved a postgraduate qualification in Maritime Studies. Bhanga served as the national secretary general of the South African Student Congress, and also as the youth leader of the Congress of the People and its member of Parliament from 2011 to 2014, prior to him defecting to the DA. He served as an MP for the DA from 2014 to 2016. He was the party's Ngqura constituency leader.
In 2016, he was elected a councillor and was appointed the Mayoral Committee Member for Human Settlements of the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality under mayor Athol Trollip, whom he succeeded as Party Provincial Leader in 2017.
Bhanga was the DA's candidate for Eastern Cape Premier in the 2019 general elections. Following the 2019 elections, he became a Member of the Eastern Cape Provincial Legislature and consequently assumed the title of Leader of the Opposition.
On 4 March 2020, Bhanga resigned from the Eastern Cape Provincial Legislature, as he is the DA's mayoral candidate for Nelson Mandela Bay.