MK Party says water tankers are a patch, not a fix, as Duduzane Zuma takes up the taps

The uMkhonto weSizwe Party’s first deputy president, Duduzane Zuma, says water tankers are a temporary measure rather than a solution to the country’s water crisis, and the party is proposing that water infrastructure be upgraded and expanded to deal with the problem at its root.

The position was set out in a post on the party’s official X account on Wednesday, tagged to its #LGE2026 local government election campaign and its #MasibuyeleBantwini slogan.

Zuma’s argument draws the line between the tanker and the pipe. A tanker, in the party’s framing, keeps a community supplied for a day. Upgraded and expanded infrastructure is what the party says would keep it supplied for good, and it is that second part it is putting forward as its answer to the crisis.

The post does not set out a cost, a timeline, a list of projects or a funding model for the upgrade and expansion it proposes. It also does not name the municipalities or provinces it has in mind. What it does is stake out a position: that emergency water delivery, however necessary in the short term, is not where the party believes the response should end.

That places the MK Party’s public line on water alongside the daily experience of residents in areas where taps have run dry and tankers have become the routine supply. For those households, the question the party’s statement raises is a practical one, whether the tanker that arrives this week is standing in for a repair that is coming or replacing it.

The statement lands in an election season, with the party’s own post carrying its local government election tag. Water delivery sits with municipalities, and the party is contesting those seats on a promise that it would treat infrastructure, rather than emergency supply, as the fix.

Whether the party’s record in the councils it already controls matches that promise is not addressed in the post.