Every incident carries an evidence strength. The four tiers are a legal shield as much as an editorial one: a claim is only ever stated as strongly as its weakest verifiable source allows.
A claim has been made — in a complaint, a media report or a filing — but no independent body has yet tested it. We record it as alleged and attribute it. It is never presented as fact.
Documented by a credible outlet or more than one independent source, but not yet the subject of a formal finding. Stronger than a single allegation; short of an official conclusion.
Established in a formal document — an Auditor-General report, an SIU or PSC finding, a commission of inquiry, a parliamentary reply. A body with a mandate has put it on the record.
Tested and upheld by a court, or admitted. The highest tier. Reserved for findings that have survived legal or judicial scrutiny.
We prioritise primary, on-the-record documents: Auditor-General reports, court judgments, National Prosecuting Authority and Special Investigating Unit findings, Public Service Commission and DPSA records, commission-of-inquiry evidence, and parliamentary questions and replies. Secondary reporting is used to establish that something is reported, and is labelled as such — it never on its own lifts a claim to documented or proven. Every source is attached to the record it supports, with a specific reference, so any reader can go and check it.
Financial figures are the amounts named in the underlying sources — the value of a contract, the quantum of a loss, the sum an official body put on the record. Where a source gives a range, we record the range. Where an amount is disputed or undisclosed, we say so rather than estimate.
Large scandals are often recorded both as a single umbrella case and as several component cases. If we simply added every amount together, the umbrella and its children would each be counted — inflating the total. So the headline figure sums only top-level (umbrella and standalone) incidents; component incidents that roll up into a parent are excluded from the total, though they remain fully browsable. This is done in the database, against the incident’s parent reference, so the number cannot silently drift.
R5.4 trillion
deduplicated total
226
top-level cases
221
persons
711
sources
A database this size will contain errors. We would rather find and fix them in the open than pretend they don’t exist. Every correction we make is logged, dated and public.
Read the corrections log →