Super Zuma

In the 2014 general election, Zuma was elected to an ANC seat in the KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Legislature, ranked 37th on the ANC's provincial party list.[7] In November 2014, he succeeded Alpha Shelembe, his colleague in the provincial legislature, as Regional Chairperson of the Moses Mabhida ANC; he stood unopposed after Shelembe withdrew from the race.[8][9][10]

On 8 November 2015, at a party elective conference in Pietermaritzburg, Zuma was elected Provincial Secretary of the ANC's branch in KwaZulu-Natal.[11] He beat Nhlakanipho Ntombela in a vote to take the position.[1] He served under Provincial Chairperson Sihle Zikalala, with Mluleki Ndobe as his deputy.[11] He resigned from the provincial legislature in order to take up the full-time party position, and his seat was taken up by Sihle Zikalala;[12] his ANC Regional Secretary position was taken over by Mthandeni Dlungwane.[13]

For much of his tenure in the secretariat, Zuma and the provincial ANC were occupied with legal battles over the validity of the conference that had elected them, with an opposing ANC faction alleging that the conference had been marred by electoral irregularities. The Pietermaritzburg High Court ultimately nullified the election and in January 2018 the ANC's National Executive Committee disbanded the provincial leadership corps, prematurely ending Zuma's term as Provincial Secretary.[14][15]

As secretary, Zuma was also known as a "fierce ally" of Jacob Zuma, the incumbent President of South Africa.[16] As the provincial ANC prepared to re-run its leadership elections in 2018, it was reported that the President supported Zuma's bid for re-election as Provincial Secretary.[16][17][18] Zuma was initially the only nominee for the secretarial position but, when the elective conference opened in July 2018, Mdumiseni Ntuli, the outgoing provincial spokesperson, was nominated from the floor of the conference by the ANC Youth League.[19][20] Ntuli won in a vote by a margin of over 200 votes from among about 1,700 delegates.[21][22]

In the aftermath of the July 2018 elective conference, Ntuli resigned from his seat in the provincial legislature – as Zuma had before him – and, on 26 September 2018, Zuma was sworn back in to the legislature to fill the resulting casual vacancy.[23] He also succeeded Ntuli as Deputy Chief Whip of the Majority Party in the legislature.[24]

In the 2019 general election, he was re-elected to a full term in the provincial legislature, ranked 24th on the ANC's party list.[7] He was named Chief Whip when the legislature was constituted after the election.[25] In July 2022, he was elected to a four-year term as an ordinary member of the KwaZulu-Natal ANC's Provincial Executive Committee.[26] On 7 February 2023, Premier Nomusa Dube-Ncube appointed him to the KwaZulu-Natal Executive Council as Member of the Executive Council (MEC) for Agriculture and Rural Development; he succeeded Bongi Sithole-Moloi in a minor reshuffle occasioned by Sihle ZIkalala's resignation from the legislature.[27][28]