DURBAN, Monday 31 August 2026 — The Inkatha Freedom Party has named Deputy Transport Minister and national spokesperson Mkhuleko Hlengwa as its mayoral candidate for eThekwini, placing one of the party’s most prominent national figures at the centre of the contest for KwaZulu-Natal’s largest municipality.
IFP president Velenkosini Hlabisa announced Hlengwa’s candidacy during an election briefing in Durban on Monday.
Hlengwa, 39, has served in Parliament since 2012 and is currently Deputy Minister of Transport in the Government of National Unity as well as the IFP’s national spokesperson.
Hlabisa said the party believed Hlengwa’s experience in government and Parliament would strengthen its campaign to take control of eThekwini.
“The IFP is confident that his experience, energy and understanding of public administration will position him to lead our campaign to restore effective, accountable and people-centred governance in eThekwini,” Hlabisa said.
The announcement gives the IFP a nationally recognisable candidate in a metro likely to be among the most consequential contests in the 4 November local government elections.
It also represents a significant deployment for Hlengwa.
Moving from national government to the eThekwini mayoralty would require him to exchange a Cabinet-level role for responsibility over a municipality with more than four million residents and an economy central to KwaZulu-Natal.
The IFP has made gains across KwaZulu-Natal during the current municipal term.
The party says it has secured 47 ward victories since the 2021 local government elections, including victories that have expanded or restored its control of municipalities in the province.
In March, for example, the IFP won two wards from the National Freedom Party in Nongoma, restoring an outright IFP majority in that council.
eThekwini presents a substantially larger challenge.
The ANC lost its outright majority in the metro in the 2021 municipal election after decades of dominance, leaving the council dependent on coalition and voting arrangements.
The political landscape shifted again after the 2024 national and provincial elections, when the MK Party emerged as the largest party in KwaZulu-Natal.
The ANC, IFP, DA and National Freedom Party subsequently formed the provincial Government of Provincial Unity, while MK became the official opposition in the provincial legislature.
Those changes have turned eThekwini into an important test of whether provincial voting patterns will carry into municipal politics.
For the IFP, Hlengwa’s nomination indicates that the party sees the metro as a serious expansion opportunity rather than concentrating primarily on the smaller KwaZulu-Natal municipalities where it already governs.
The party has been increasing its campaign activity in Durban ahead of the election.
Hlabisa conducted voter-registration campaigning across oThongathi, Durban Central and Umlazi earlier this month, while the IFP has chosen KwaMashu’s Princess Magogo Stadium for the launch of its national local government manifesto on 20 September.
That places one of the party’s biggest national campaign events inside eThekwini less than seven weeks before voting day.
The selection of Hlengwa also gives the IFP a candidate with experience in parliamentary oversight.
Before becoming deputy minister, Hlengwa chaired Parliament’s Standing Committee on Public Accounts, one of the legislature’s principal financial-oversight bodies.
He has subsequently served as the IFP’s public face on national political and organisational matters.
His candidacy means the eThekwini campaign will also intersect with the politics of the national Government of National Unity.
The IFP is part of the GNU alongside the ANC, DA and several smaller parties, but those parties will compete directly against one another for municipal control in November.
The same dynamic applies in KwaZulu-Natal’s provincial government, where the ANC, IFP and DA cooperate while preparing to contest the province’s municipalities against one another.
Hlengwa’s nomination therefore places a serving GNU deputy minister in direct electoral competition with parties that are his partners in national government.
The IFP had signalled on Friday that Hlabisa would use Monday’s briefing to make significant announcements about the party’s election strategy and readiness.
Naming its eThekwini candidate fulfils part of that strategy.
The contest will now turn to whether Hlengwa can translate the IFP’s broader KwaZulu-Natal municipal growth into support in the province’s largest urban centre.
With no guarantee that any party will secure an outright majority in eThekwini, the result could determine not only who becomes mayor but which parties hold the balance of power in coalition negotiations after 4 November.
