The weeks leading up to any election are always awash with torrents of too much verbosity and parched with trickles of too little action.

As local government elections loom in SA, we are once again having to listen to promises that may or may not be kept. It says a lot for humans and our ability to hope that centuries of history have not made us jaded and cynical. Well, not entirely jaded and cynical anyway. We might scoff at the platoon of paltry parties making puerile pledges to improve our lives, because centuries of less-than-good governance have taught us to expect disappointment, yet still we turn up at the polls and hope that our chosen candidates will deliver the services they say they will...