What do the four verdicts mean?
Every claim gets one word, an icon and a one-line reason.
Verified
An official record, or two major news outlets not linked to the party, show it is true.
Misleading
Partly true. But something left out changes what it means.
Unproven
There isn't enough evidence yet to say if it is true or false. This is not a mark against the party.
False
Official records, or several reliable sources, show it is not true.
Which sources count most?
Official records count most. A (Party A group of people who stand for election together, with shared plans.) own words count least.
- Can back a verdict
Official records
From the Auditor-General, (Council The group of elected people who make decisions for a municipality. They pass its budget and choose the mayor.) minutes and budgets, the courts, the Electoral Commission (IEC), Stats SA and National Treasury.
- Can back a verdict
Established news
These are big news outlets. No party owns or runs them. For example: News24, Daily Maverick, GroundUp, Mail & Guardian, eNCA and SABC.
- Support only
Fact-checkers
They can back up a verdict. But they never decide it on their own.
- Shows the claim only
Party material
It shows what the party said. A party's own material never proves its own claim.
Seven more source rulesEskom, newspapers, council statements, grants, and state or foreign money7 rules
- Eskom's own records count as official. That means its load-shedding, outage and payment records. Its opinions and forecasts do not count.
- Big national and regional papers from the major media groups count as established news for facts about councils and (Mayor The leader of the municipality. Councillors choose this person, not voters. So the seats each party wins decide who can lead.). Small local papers can back up a date or a detail. But each fact still needs a big outlet or an official record too.
- A party can't prove its own claim with a statement from a council it runs. We also need a source not linked to the party, like the news, National Treasury or the Auditor-General.
- Some news outlets get grants from foundations, including foreign ones. Where an outlet's funder is linked to a party, we say so next to that outlet. That outlet alone cannot make that party's own claim Verified. We need a second source.
- SAnews is the government speaking, so we treat it as an official statement, not as news. It cannot prove a claim about government work by a party that is in the national government.
- Money or ownership from a foreign government does not change how we use an outlet for local claims. That outlet cannot prove a claim about the same country's policy or its links in South Africa.
- On each outlet's Sources page we name every owner and funder we confirmed, in one plain line. If we found none, we say so and give the date we checked.
How do we keep it fair to every party?
We check claims, not (Party A group of people who stand for election together, with shared plans.), with the same rules for everyone.
Same rules for every party
Same issues and verdict rules for all. Parties that never ran a (Council The group of elected people who make decisions for a municipality. They pass its budget and choose the mayor.) are not marked down.
Checked twice
A second checker opens every source of a metro claim again. A claim that fails is not published. Other facts show “Sourced, not yet reviewed” until they get a second check.
20 parties, one rule
Every National Assembly party standing in 2026, plus any party standing in 200 or more councils.
A new order every visit
We shuffle party lists on every visit, so no party is always first or always last.
What we never do
- Tell you who to vote for, or endorse a party
- Rank parties or give a party an overall score
- Predict results or publish polls
- Take party funding
Common questions
Tap a question to see the answer.
What kinds of claim do we check?Claims about itself, about others, council records
- A party's claim about itself.
- A claim by one party about another. We label it "Claim by X about Y". We never repeat it as fact.
- A (Council The group of elected people who make decisions for a municipality. They pass its budget and choose the mayor.) record: what a council delivered, did not deliver, or cancelled.
What do the review labels mean?The checked line on each claim
- Independently re-checked
- The claim passed the second check.
- Sourced, not yet reviewed
- Facts about (Party A group of people who stand for election together, with shared plans.) and (Municipality The local government for your area. It looks after local services, such as water, rubbish removal and local roads. There are 257.). Each one has a source, but it has not had a second check yet.
Why do council records name who was in charge?Many metros changed coalitions since 2021
Many (Metro A big city with one council for the whole city, such as Johannesburg or Cape Town. There are 8. Voters there get 2 ballot papers.) changed (Coalition Parties that agree to run a council together, usually because none has more than half the seats alone. Together they choose the mayor.) since 2021. A coalition is a group of parties that run a council together. So we name the (Mayor The leader of the municipality. Councillors choose this person, not voters. So the seats each party wins decide who can lead.) and the parties running the council at the time, with dates.
Why do we keep a copy of every source?Websites change
Websites change. Sometimes a page is edited or deleted. So we save a copy of each source on the day we read it. It is a Wayback Machine snapshot, which means a saved copy of a web page kept by the Internet Archive, or our own dated copy.