If you’re sitting on the fence about whether or not to drag yourself out of bed on Wednesday to cast your vote then listen up, because there’s reason to believe this election could be one of the most important in the country’s history.

Mmusi Maimane certainly believes so, the DA conducting a whirlwind weekend of campaigning that they hope will see them break new ground in Johannesburg, Pretoria and Port Elizabeth.

Polls from those municipalities suggest that the ANC will not clinch a majority victory, but the DA won’t either. So why is Mmusi so excited? Over to QZ:

The DA’s exuberance lies in the expectation that, should the ANC fail to clinch a majority, the DA will gang up with smaller opposition parties to form a coalition government.

Were that to happen, the DA would be right to describe the 2016 elections as the most important to the party itself. For the first time since its inception, the DA would have the opportunity to co-govern two metros in Gauteng province and another in the Eastern Cape. It already runs the key city of Cape Town…

Both the DA and the EFF have already signaled that they are prepared to enter into a coalition government together, difficult as their negotiations will certainly be.

It should by now be clear: what is at stake in these elections is the possibility of the ANC losing three of its traditional support bases.

Of course this has the ANC running scared, which is why JZ spent his entire weekend belittling the DA to anyone who would listen. Very little was said about what the ANC would actually do for the people, and their fear-mongering approach shows the very real threat the DA now poses.

So what’s at stake if they do lose those aforementioned metros?

It is now clear that, once it loses a metro, the ANC never gets it back. Cape Town is a case in point, where the DA has solidified its support from its early shaky grounds. There the ANC seems gone – forever…

If the ANC were to lose the three metros, it would essentially mean the end of Nelson Mandela’s party in Gauteng, the most urbanized [sic] province in South Africa. Thus, the party would be retreating into the obscurity of rural existence when the country’s future lies in the cities.

The mere fact that we can now speculate like this is a sign that South Africa is changing. The days of an ANC that has the throats of opposition parties confidently under its heel are over.

This, perhaps, is what the DA means when it says the 2016 municipal elections are the most important ever. We must all wait to see if the word “change” on DA posters is reality or fiction come August 3.

So yeah, if that’s not enough to make you haul ass out of bed and vote then you’ve got no right to complain when our top brass fail to deliver on their promises.

Wednesday folks, it’s going to be a big one.

[source:qz]