Modi joined the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU–PF) party in 2002 or 2003. In 2014, he was elected secretary for indigenisation for the party's Bulawayo city district executive. He was elected ward secretary for production and labour in 2018, and later rose to become ZANU–PF provincial secretary of finance for Bulawayo. Amid the factionalism within ZANU–PF that led to the 2017 Zimbabwean coup d'état, Modi was seen as an ally of Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa.