With the municipal elections fast approaching, we’re keeping an eye on data that can tell us how the parties are doing. The Democratic Alliance is streaks ahead of the others when it comes to donations, declaring R128-million between January 2025 and March 2026.

What does that mean? It’s hard to tell when five of the main parties, including the EFF, the Patriotic Alliance and MK, hadn’t declared anything at all by March. They could be sitting on a pile made up of hundreds of small-ish donations of less than R200,000. 

You can keep an eye on who is donating to whom and how much with The Outlier's political party donations tool, which goes back to 2021.