Well, now we know; 4 November is the date when we all go to the polls to make our mark to choose the people we want to represent us in our local government.
In many ways, local government elections are more important than general elections because city government just seems much more immediate.
We feel the pain of gridlock from broken traffic lights and, literally, the jarring of potholes as our tyres burst.
We can see the waste and the non-delivery of services – and we can moan – and we do – around braai fires and water coolers, to anybody who’ll give us half an ear.
But, here’s the rub, the level of moaning is inversely proportional to the number of us who will actually pitch up to vote.
The administration of our towns and cities has, to all intents and purposes, been getting worse but fewer and fewer of us are even bothering to register to vote.
That’s the first step, it’s not like a general election which is far more forgiving. For a local government election, you have to vote in the ward that you are registered in.
The Electoral Commission of SA will do its usual excellent job of encouraging people to register, starting with their usual app or web-based search engine for you to check if your registration is still valid (if you changed address in the past four years) and if not, schedule times when you can re-register.
Thanks to the president you’re even getting a day off to vote.
The state puts in a huge effort to make sure we have regular, free, fair and transparent elections.
It’s a far cry from the one man, one vote, once, that bedevilled liberated Africa for decades and it’s a benchmark for much of the rest of the world, too.
The down side is that we now have to put up with the prospect of some of our politicians coming out of their quadrennial hibernation to persuade us that they deserve our vote.
There’ll be promises aplenty, a fair amount of false humility and a decent dollop of gaslighting by the incumbents as they try to plaster lipstick on the pig that has been local government for most South Africans.
Thanks to the gogo who would be mayor, we might even see more pothole swimmers and zipliners.
Buckle up, the fun’s about to start, but it’s more Greek tragedy than comedy.
