How Sikhetha works

Independence

Sikhetha does not endorse a party or candidate. All parties are compared using the same rules. This is an independent project, not an Electoral Commission service or an official ballot.

How matches are calculated

1. The statements. 18 statements cover 8 themes: clean & accountable government, water, electricity & tariffs, energy & load reduction, jobs, contracts & local economy, migration & informal trade, housing & land, safety & by-laws, heritage & identity. You answer on a five-point scale and can mark the issues that matter more to you.
2. Party positions. Scores run from -2 (strongly disagrees) to +2 (strongly agrees). Each recorded position names a source and includes a short evidence note. Some scores come from explicit policy; others interpret a related statement or a council record. Those interpretations are labelled. Older sources are labelled too. Where we have no sourced position, we show a gap, not a neutral answer.
3. Your agreement. For each statement you answered, we compare your answer with the party's on the five-point scale. Same answer: full points. One step apart on the same side (agree vs strongly agree): three-quarters. One of you neutral, the other mild: half. One of you neutral and the other strong, or the two of you on opposite sides but both mild: a quarter. Opposite sides with one of you strong: almost nothing. Opposite extremes: nothing. Statements you skip are ignored; statements you answer "neutral" count half, because a neutral answer says little about who you agree with. Statements you mark "this matters a lot to me" count 1.5×; statements in the themes you chose as priorities count 1.5×.
4. Blank positions and thin evidence. Missing positions do not become agreements or disagreements. The score is adjusted towards 50% with a fixed allowance of two unknown statements plus a half-weight allowance for each missing position. This is a calculation rule, not evidence that a party is neutral. A party needs at least 4 comparable answers and coverage of at least half your answers to be ranked. Parties within 3 points of the leading score are shown as a joint result. This is not a statistical confidence interval.
5. Your outlook. Your answers also place you on three scales: Public-led / Market-led; Inclusive / Firm enforcement; Transformation & heritage / Technocratic reform. The first two determine a descriptive outlook. It is not a personality test or a prediction of your vote. An outlook card still describes your views, even when it omits party names.

A match measures agreement with stated positions. It says nothing about a party's competence, honesty, candidates, or record of delivery. Judge those separately, starting with the "Your council" pages.

Independent review

Independent review of the positions is still pending. A source link lets you inspect the evidence; it does not mean an independent reviewer has approved the score. The five partial translations are drafts and still need native-speaker review.

Think a score is wrong? Every party page has a "tell us" form. Parties can submit a correction with a source, and every accepted change is recorded on the changelog.

Sources

The research for the Local Government Elections 2026 uses manifestos, official documents, public statements, reporting and council records. It includes older national-election sources where newer local policy was not found. Coverage differs by party and topic. The directory is not a complete certified list of parties or candidates on your ballot.

Municipal facts (mayors, coalitions, wards, 2021 results) come from municipal websites, the Electoral Commission, the Municipal Demarcation Board, Statistics South Africa and news reporting, each cited on the relevant page.

Spotted an error?

Party positions change, coalitions shift, and we can make mistakes. If a position is wrong, out of date, or missing a source, tell us what should change and where it's published. Corrections are logged and applied through the same review process as the original research.

Contact: sikhetha.za@gmail.com

Privacy in one paragraph

The web quiz does not require a name, email address or phone number, and does not submit answers to the response database by default. Answers and result links still describe political views. Your result address includes your answers and selected area; it can be visible in browser history, to people you share it with and to the hosting provider. Read the full privacy notice.