How it works
Answer 30 statements about how South Africa should be run, and the quiz shows how closely you match each of the eight biggest parties. This page explains the rules behind it.
Four things to know up front:
- Every position shown on this site carries a source: the party's own manifesto, a policy document, a parliamentary vote or a dated public statement.
- Every party is covered by the same written rules, at the same depth.
- Your answers are worked out on your own device and never sent anywhere.
- No party paid for, approved or supplied anything on this site.
Which parties are covered
A written rule decides, so anyone can check it. A party is covered in this edition (the one built around the 2026 local elections) if it passes any one of three tests:
- It won at least 1% of the national vote in 2024.
- It holds a metro mayoralty, or won at least 5% in any metro in 2021.
- It averaged at least 3% in national polls over the six months before the party list was locked.
Eight parties pass, all on the first test (IEC final results, 2024 national ballot): ANC 40.18%, DA 21.81%, MK Party 14.58%, EFF 9.52%, IFP 3.85%, Patriotic Alliance 2.06%, Freedom Front Plus 1.36%, ActionSA 1.20%. The nearest miss is the ACDP at 0.60%. Independent candidates are not covered in this edition, because they contest single wards and have no party-wide positions to code. A party that is in is not removed mid-edition, and the rule is re-run for each election.
How your match is worked out
On each statement, you and each party can be in one of three places: agree, in between, or disagree. A party scores 2 points when its position is the same as yours, 1 point when it is one step away (you agree, the party is in between), and 0 when it is the opposite. Every answered statement counts once; nothing is weighted. Your match with a party is its points as a share of the most it could have scored.
Statements you skip are left out. Where a party has no published position on a statement, that statement is left out of your match with that party, and the statement-by-statement view on your result says how many of the 30 each match rests on. All eight parties are always shown, ranked. If you say which party you expect to match, that answer is only used to show you the comparison afterwards, never in the scoring.
The dials and the map
Five dials each summarise a group of statements: economy, services, redistribution, order and borders, and where power sits. The two names on a dial are the ends of a scale, not labels for a party. Your dial is the average of your answers on that group's statements, and shows from your first answer in the group; a party's dial is the same average over its published positions, and shows only when it has positions on at least two of the group's statements. The map is a chart that plots you and the parties on two dials at once: economy runs across, and you pick the dial that runs up.
Where the party positions come from
Every position is read from the party's own published words: its manifestos, policy documents and conference resolutions, recorded parliamentary votes, and dated statements published by the party or made by its leader, an MP or an official spokesperson, answering the statement directly.
A party that has addressed a topic with a mixed or conditional position shows "In between". Where no published position was found, the page says "no published position found"; the site does not fill in a position a party has not published. Each shown position has a Source link, and the full citation, with page or section and date, is on the party's sources page.
Parties were not asked to confirm their placements. What you see is what the documents say.
How the statements were chosen
About 80 statements were drafted across local government issues and the national questions, and the 30 kept are the ones the covered parties split on. Every statement asks one question in plain language, shows what agreeing and disagreeing mean, and has at least one covered party on each side. Under each statement, a short explainer ends with one line giving each side's case at equal strength.
Two balance checks shaped the choice. For about half the statements, agreeing is the answer that means more government action; for the other half, less. And when the statements were chosen, seven parties' published positions sat between 45% and 55% on the agree side; the EFF sits at 44% after a statement was swapped on 13 October 2026, with the swap and its reason recorded in the public decisions file. These checks shaped the choice of statements only; no party's position is ever changed to hit a number.
The statements and the coded positions were checked in independent review rounds before publication, and the statements are frozen for this edition. A position changes only through the correction process.
The party pages
Every party's page is built from the same template with the same rules, so every party gets the same kinds of information, written the same way. Each section links back to this page, and every fact's full citation sits on that party's sources page.
- What it promises. The first five items of the first list of commitments in the party's 2026 manifesto, in the manifesto's own order, skipping any list inside a foreword or leader's message; where a manifesto has no such list, the first commitment under each of its first five headings. The short labels are the site's; the quoted words are the party's. Where a party had published no 2026 manifesto when last checked, the page says so and uses the party's most recent one.
- Where it leans. The quiz's five dials, explained above, worked out from the party's published positions only. If you have taken the quiz on this device, your own result appears beside the party's; it comes from numbers saved on your device and is never sent anywhere.
- Where it stands. The party's position on the 30 statements, exactly as the quiz scores them, with the reason and a Source link for each published position.
- Party similarity. How closely two parties' published positions agree, using the quiz's own scoring, counted over the statements where both have a position. Agreement on these statements says nothing about which parties would work together.
- Results and offices. Election results from the Electoral Commission's own reports: national 2014, 2019 and 2024, provincial 2024, and local 2016 and 2021 on the proportional-representation ballot, along with the premierships and metro mayoralties a party holds and whether it is part of the national government. Updated after each election once the new councils have met.
- Funding. Public funding received and donations the party had to declare by law (those above a set amount), from the Electoral Commission's annual party funding reports, for the financial years since the Political Party Funding Act began in April 2021. Neither figure is a party's total income.
Also on each page: fixed facts (when the party was founded, where it came from, and its leaders) and up to 25 words the party uses to describe itself, quoted from its constitution, founding document or values page. The site applies no ideology label of its own, and nothing on these pages is about any person's conduct.
Spot a mistake?
If you think a position is wrong, send the document that shows it: corrections address, published with the site's domain. A position changes only when a party's own published words, read against what agreeing and disagreeing mean on that statement, show the reading was wrong. Every change is recorded with its date and reason in the public decisions file.
Your answers and your privacy
Your answers are scored on your phone or computer and never sent anywhere. Your progress and your last result stay on your own device so you can come back later; "Start again" clears them. The result link you can share contains your answers, so the result can be rebuilt by whoever opens it; share it only if you are happy with that. The site sets no cookies; visit counts come from Cloudflare Web Analytics, which is cookieless and identifies no one. There is no signup yet; when one launches, the only personal data the site will hold is an email address you choose to give.
Data and figures
The full dataset can be downloaded as CSV or JSON, and the party facts as JSON: every shown position with its reason and source. Readings too weak to publish appear in the download as "no published position found", the same as on the site, and the download carries a sixth dial, social values, which is not shown on the site because it rests on too few statements. Licence: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (use it freely, credit Which Party). Dataset version 0.4-draft, 13 October 2026.
Figures used in the statements
Correct as of October 2026 and checked each year:
- Minimum wage (from March 2026)R30.23 an hour
- SRD grantR370 a month
- Top income tax: 45% fromR1,878,601 a year
- Income limit for a fully subsidised houseR3,500 a month
- First Home Finance band, up toR22,000 a month
- NSFAS household income limitR350,000 a year
- Next planned coal station closuresfrom about 2030
- Council seat threshold in the government's bill1%
- State support for SAA since 2007, with a new partner search approved in August 2026over R50 billion
Party colours
Charts use one fixed colour per party, taken from the party's own branding, with shades set so similar colours stay apart. A name is always printed beside a colour, so nothing depends on colour alone, and your own marker is always the site's violet, which no covered party uses.
- ANC gold
- DA blue
- EFF red
- MK Party green
- IFP red
- Patriotic Alliance green
- Freedom Front Plus orange
- ActionSA green
Who built this
Which Party runs independently, under its own name. No party pays for it or approves it, and its only interest is that the quiz is fair to every party. Every rule on this page is written down so it can be checked, and every position carries a source. Edition: 2026 local government elections.