Duduzane Zuma says MK Party wants eThekwini outright, coalition only as fallback

The MK Party wants an outright majority in eThekwini so it can govern the metro without partners, and will consider coalition talks only if the 4 November local government elections leave it short, the party’s first deputy president, Duduzane Zuma, has said.

As IOL reported on 29 September, Zuma set out the party’s plans for the municipality in an interview with the Daily News. He said the party had learned from the 2024 national and provincial elections and believed it would govern better alone.

“We are aiming for an outright majority because we believe it would be best if we governed alone,” he said. “However, should that not happen, we will be open to sitting at the table and engaging in possible coalition talks.”

eThekwini is South Africa’s third-largest metro by population and the busiest port city on the continent. Its council runs water, electricity distribution, refuse, roads and clinics for roughly four million people, which is why the metro’s ballot is the most consequential of the November municipal elections and the one national parties treat as a proxy for 2029.

Zuma said eThekwini was central to the party’s growth. Winning the city and running it competently, he argued, would let voters judge the MK Party’s record before the next national election. He said the city’s condition could not be left as it was, that it was performing below its potential, and that poor governance and weak service delivery had contributed to water and electricity outages and the deterioration of buildings and infrastructure.

He promised that an MK Party-led administration would act on governance failures, including those of people who had served in the city’s administration before. “We will look retrospectively at what has been done and what has not been done,” he said. “Some people may call this a witch-hunt, but we will take action retrospectively.”

On the party’s frequent changes of senior personnel, Zuma said the turnover was not instability but an attempt to build a culture of accountability, and that the party did not want people who were “comfortable and just going along for the ride”. He said complaints about the manipulation of candidate lists in eThekwini, which led to protests by members, were being addressed, and that the party faced internal and external pressure aimed at destabilising it.

Two analysts quoted by IOL read the party’s chances differently. Political analyst Thabani Khumalo said the MK Party had the potential to win an outright majority on its past performance but that he expected it to take the most votes without crossing the line, largely because of problems of its own making. He agreed that a win would give the party a platform to show it can govern. Political analyst Dr Siyabonga Ntombea said a majority was possible but far from certain, pointing to an Ipsos poll that he said gave the party about a 55% chance of an outright majority while internal instability had left some members unhappy.

The MK Party was launched in December 2023 and contested its first national election in May 2024, when it became the third-largest party in the National Assembly. It has not yet run a metro. That makes eThekwini the first test of whether its support converts into administration, and the first place voters can measure the distance between its promises and its delivery.

For residents, the practical question is what changes on the ground. An outright majority would let the party appoint the city manager, the mayoral committee and the officials who decide water and electricity repairs without bargaining with partners. A coalition would require it to trade those posts, or share them, which is the arrangement that has governed several metros since 2021 and that has repeatedly stalled budgets and service decisions.

Source: IOL, Duduzane Zuma says MK Party wants to govern eThekwini alone.