Nxumalo was formerly the mayor of Bushbuckridge Local Municipality between August 2016 and June 2024. She entered professional politics as a local councillor in Bushbuckridge in 2006 and was elected as mayor in the 2016 local elections.
She was elected to her third consecutive term as a councillor in the August 2016 local elections, in which she served as the ANC's head of elections in municipalities across Mpumalanga.[3] After the election, on 9 August 2016, the ANC announced that it would support her for election as mayor of Bushbuckridge.[3][4] She held the mayoral office for the next eight years, gaining re-election in the November 2021 local elections and becoming the town's longest-serving mayor.[2] During that time she was also one of three deputy provincial chairpersons of the Mpumalanga branch of the South African Local Government Association, having gained election to that office in October 2016.[5]
During Nxumalo's first year as mayor, Bushbuckridge received a clean audit from the Auditor-General and was honoured by the Chartered Institute of Government Finance, Audit and Risk Officers as the South African municipality with the best improvement in annual audit outcomes.[6] Over the next five years Nxumalo launched a number of infrastructure initiatives in the town, including a new R8.1-million water reticulation and purification system on the Sabie River, constructed in collaboration with the Kruger National Park,[7] and an R11-million paved road connecting Malubane village to the R536.[8] In February 2019 she announced that the Bushbuckridge Local Municipality had terminated its contract with Rand Water and henceforth would in-source municipal bulk water supply in order to save costs.[9]
Nxumalo later said that she had taken office with a single-minded intention "to speed up the service delivery vehicle".[10] However, Bushbuckridge residents continued to lodge violent service delivery protests throughout her mayoral term, including in Ga-Modibidi in 2019,[11] in Mapulaneng in 2021,[12] in Marongwane in 2022,[13] and in Acornhoek in 2023.[14][15]
She was appointed as the whip of the NCOP's Mpumalanga delegation,[18] and she also became the ANC's whip in the Select Committee on Finance and Select Committee on Appropriations.[16] In addition, with Patrick Mabilo and Makhi Feni, she was one of three members whom the NCOP designated to serve on the Magistrates Commission as a parliamentary representative.[19]
