A government’s decisions can mean the difference between life and death. To help you make sense of what parties’ promises mean when it comes to health, we’ve put together a handy analysis tool.

The tool not only gives you an overview of whether your party says something about the nine health issues we extracted from the election manifestos, but also much more depth to help you scrutinise a party’s promises and make sense of it, in easy, understandable language.

Because that’s what Bhekisisa stands for.

How to use the tool

You can decide in how much depth you want to compare parties’ promises:

• Look at only the landing page to get a quick overview of what parties cover — a green tick means the issue is mentioned in the manifesto; a black cross means it’s not.
• If you want to go deeper, click on a tick or cross in a party column to see what they say (or don’t say) about that specific issue. You can go back to the tool from there.
• If you want to see what a party says about each of the nine issues in one go, click on the block in the first row under a party’s name or logo to be taken to a page where you can read everything at once. Again, you can link back to the full tool to look at another party.
• If you want to read a party’s full, original manifesto, click on the link we show on their page.

Analysing the manifestos and unpacking the full picture is a big undertaking, so we’re starting off with seven today — the ANC, DA, EFF, MKP, GOOD, BOSA and RISE Mzansi — and will be adding more every day or two as we go. Keep an eye on our social media channels for alerts about updates to the tool.