This study is EISA’s pilot research on the thematic issue of party and campaign financing. Through this pilot, EISA has developed a methodology for assessing party and campaign finance that can be adapted to different contexts. Researchers from six of South Africa’s nine
provinces were tasked with conducting field research to identify campaign donation and expenditure trends during the 2019 elections. Researchers were deployed in the Eastern Cape, Free State, KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo, Mpumalanga and Western Cape.EISA initiated a party and campaign finance research project to run from April to July 2019, in order to assess
and document the transparency and integrity of the 2019 electoral process. The research is implemented within the framework of EISA’s broader electoral support programme for the 2019 elections. The project sought to: gather the perceptions of political parties and other
stakeholders on the PPFA; assess the impact of private funding sources in the 2019 elections; identify observable trends in campaign finance and expenditure during the 2019 elections; evaluate the effectiveness of the current institutional framework for party and campaign finance regulation; make recommendations on the operationalisation of PPFA 2018.
