Perhaps the best thing you can do for the party you belong to. . . is to vote for somebody else.

In fact, it is possibly your unwavering loyalty that is killing your party faster than anything else.

Before you dismiss me, consider my argument: If your Ward Councillor (WC) has been doing a miserable job for the past 5 years, is voting for him or her again going to miraculously improve said councillor’s performance? No!

By voting along party lines despite a miserable effort from your WC and/or municipality, all you are doing is sending a loud message to your party:

“I am happy with the state of my ward/municipality and delighted that I have an incompetent and/or a thug representing his or her own interests in council, accepting a fat salary every month while doing buggerall about my potholed streets and failing electricity infrastructure.”

Of course you may be lucky enough to have an amazing WC/municipality, in which case ignore my advice.

There are those champions out there and their reward should be re-election.

The same applies if you don’t show up on voting day or spoil your ballot. Doing so means you are to accept your lot, whatever the majority decide.

No-one takes spoiled ballots seriously. Why? Because only votes count.

The wonderful thing about the municipal elections is that they are so up close and personal.

This is quite different from the national and provincial elections, where you vote for a party and not individuals.  The municipal elections are about real people.

These people live among us. You bump into them at the supermarket, see them on the sports field and may even have known them since they were in diapers (or they you).

Most communities have a fairly good idea of whether their WC is a crook or the type to sleep through council meetings. Yet the crooks and sluggards get voted in again and again!

When choosing my WC I don’t give too much weight to the lofty promises of political leaders. It’s easy to promise the earth when you want my vote.

I look at character. Who is this person who will have to show up every day to take care of the community I live in?

The party they represent may be fantastic but when the rubber hits the pothole will they be in our corner or their own?

WCs are not miracle workers and we cannot expect them to be, but the vote I cast is the best shot I have towards ensuring the municipality where I live is governed well.

The average person will tell you they don’t care about politics. But they do care when there is no running water, when the electricity is out, when roads fall apart, when streetlights don’t work, when fire fighters don’t arrive and when there aren’t enough schools, clinics and libraries.

In SA today the most common response to mismanagement is to protest.

There are daily protests across SA, mostly about service delivery, housing and jobs, and increasingly these often violent protests are viewed by people as the only way to effect change.

According to a 2012 paper titled ‘Rebellion of the Poor’ author Peter Alexander from the University of Johannesburg found that from 2009-12, there were an average of 2.9 unrest incidents per day in SA.

“I have not yet found any other country where there is a similar level of ongoing urban unrest,” writes Alexander.

I may have been only 9-years-old when the first democratic elections took place in 1994, but the magnitude of that day will never leave me.

In 1994 millions queued over four-days and more than 19 million votes were cast. For the first time every South African had the right to determine how s/he would be governed.

Today there are only 26 million registered voters. Of these at least half are not expected to show up on November 1 (in the 2016 municipal elections voter turnout was at 58%).

Will you do your part?

***

On Monday, mayor Dolly Govender was seen with broom in hand cleaning the streets of KwaDukuza CBD.

She launched the clean-up campaign with partner aQuellé and then, boy it’s been a busy week for the mayor’s office, opened the town’s Theunissen Park on Tuesday.

The park revamp was announced in 2018 and was completed by June 30. The three month delay in opening it to the public was apparently due to the third wave.

The park includes, among other things, a play park, outdoor gym, amphitheatre and braai and picnic facilities. This is really a fantastic upgrade for the town.

I only hope that the clean-up campaign is not a one day event and that the normally littered streets of KwaDukuza do not encroach on this now pristine park once the sing-song and dance is over.

It is the long-term maintenance of investments into key infrastructure that are the yardstick by which any municipality is to be judged.

***

During the writing of this editorial I was interrupted possibly 30 times.

“Can I have another snack mom?” was the favoured question, followed by “Come wipe my bum!”, “I hurt myself” and a tantrum because I wouldn’t let my four-year-old play with matches . . . My hubby was ‘on’ (like Tag but for parents) but from his garage turned workshop he was happily oblivious.

“They were with me the whole time!” he protested when I told him. Anyone who thinks working from home is a great idea clearly does not have pre-schoolers.

Every day I walk into an actual office I say a prayer of thanks.