Nqaba Bhanga was born in Port Elizabeth, KwaZakhele, Nobatana Street in 1977 on August 28. He started his primary schooling at Ebhongweni Primary School at age eight due to his mother’s unemployment – she could not afford to register Nqaba or acquire a birth certificate to prove his age.

It was at the historic KwaZakhele High School that he first got involved in politics, elected the regional chairperson of the Congress of South African Students (Cosas).

Nqaba joined the African National Congress and became Nelson Mandela Bay ANC Youth Leader, an SRC president at the Port Elizabeth Technikon (now Nelson Mandela University) where he graduated with his first qualification in Public Administration and later studied towards a postgraduate qualification in Maritime Studies.

The Provincial Leader also served as the national secretary general of the South African Student Congress (SASCO), and then the youth leader of the breakaway Congress of the People (COPE) and its member of Parliament, before switching to the DA in 2014.

The switch followed a conversation with Federal Chairperson, Athol Trollip, where they agreed that the people of Nelson Mandela Bay needed leaders to work together to save first Nelson Mandela Bay and, ultimately, the Eastern Cape and South Africa.