Water Tanker Mafia: When a Crisis Becomes a Business Model
South Africa’s water crisis is often framed as a story of failing infrastructure: ageing pipes, neglected pump stations, and municipal systems stretched beyond capacity. But in many communities, the story has evolved into something even darker and more difficult to fix. It is not only about collapse. It is also about incentive.
On this episode of CheckPoint, host Nkepile Mabuse speaks to investigative journalist Thanduxolo Jika about the rise of what has become known as the “water tanker mafia” a
networked ecosystem where emergency water delivery turns into a permanent revenue stream, and where the line between service delivery and extraction becomes dangerously thin.
The conversation begins with a simple question: how did this business grow from being a stop gap solution in semi rural areas into a widespread industry that now sits at the centre of municipal water failure across the country? Jika’s answer is blunt. It is scary, he says, because the damage is not theoretical. People have died in protests for the most basic of human rights: clean running water.
From emergency to dependency
Water tankers are meant to be temporary: a response to breakdown while infrastructure is repaired. But the problem, as Jika describes it, is that emergency delivery can become the preferred system, not because it works better for residents, but because it works better for those who profit from it.
The pattern is familiar. Infrastructure is allowed to fail or is not properly maintained. Communities are told there is a crisis. Tankers arrive. Budgets follow. And a parallel procurement economy begins to form around contracts, invoices, and political relationships.
In the episode, Jika explains that sources pointed to a critical red flag: trucks allegedly claiming to deliver volumes of water that they were not actually delivering, while invoices were still being processed and paid. That, he says, forced the investigation into a sharper place. Because once municipalities are paying for deliveries that do not match reality, the issue is no longer about shortage alone. It becomes about fraud, collusion, and a captured system.
The contractor economy
A key feature of the tanker economy is how it rewards breakdown rather than repair. If the goal is to restore infrastructure permanently, the tanker market dries up. But if infrastructure remains unreliable, tankers remain essential. And that creates incentives that are not aligned with public interest.
The episode references reporting about businessmen and contractors making significant money from water delivery contracts while infrastructure continues to fail. Instead of building resilience, public funds are cycled into a system that thrives on repeated emergency.
It is a grim logic, but it is also a practical one: the fastest way to secure ongoing payment is to keep the crisis ongoing. And when contractors are politically connected, the crisis can become protected.
Accountability: the missing ingredient
Perhaps the most damning part of the conversation is not the existence of allegations, but how easily consequences can be delayed, redirected, or ignored.
Nkepile raises the question of what happens when leaders promise action against municipal managers and officials. Jika points to the gap between public statements and institutional reality: reports may recommend criminal charges, but councils can refuse to act. Even where evidence exists, accountability can still be blocked by political majorities and internal power dynamics.
In simple terms, the system has a veto. A council can decide that a disciplinary process is enough. A recommendation can be “noted” and then buried. And the network that benefits from the tanker economy can continue operating with little disruption.
The conversation lands on a brutal conclusion: the problem is not only individual municipal managers. The deeper issue is the political organisation that holds the majority in municipalities and the ecosystem around it. If councillors, municipal officials, and tender connected players are all tied into the same incentives, the system protects itself. And when a system protects itself, residents lose.
Why this story matters now
This is not only a corruption story. It is also a story about how service delivery failure can be transformed into an extraction model that becomes harder to dismantle over time. Once communities are locked into emergency delivery, it becomes easier to normalise the abnormal. Water outages become routine. Tankers become “the plan.” And the expectation of functioning infrastructure is quietly downgraded.
The tragedy is that water is not optional. It is not a luxury that can be postponed until budgets improve or politics stabilise. It is the baseline. When that baseline is weaponised for profit, every other part of civic life becomes unstable: health, dignity, safety, schooling, local economies, and public trust.
The uncomfortable question
At the end of the episode, the question becomes unavoidable: if evidence can exist, if findings can be tabled, and if the public can know what is happening, why does nothing change?
The answer, as the episode suggests, is not a lack of information. It is the structure of power and incentives. Until the incentive to profit from collapse is removed, emergency will remain a business model. And until consequences land in a way that cannot be ignored by political majorities, accountability will remain a performance, not a practice.
Clean water should never be a bargaining chip. But as this conversation makes clear, it has become one of the most profitable crises in local government.
Catch up on all CheckPoint Podcast episodes here: https://www.enca.com/checkpoint-podcast-0