After a long and often boring build-up over several months, the elections are finally over.
Now we can finally get on with our lives, which must include keeping those politicians to the promises they were making up until a week ago.
This is where we often go wrong.
The ink on our thumbs have barely started fading, and we’ve already forgotten about the promises that were made to secure our votes.
But like I said last week, I do believe the tide is turning and South Africans are very nearly out of patience.
And I think those feelings were starting to show in the election results, which is why President Cyril Ramaphosa has been promising to clean up the public service.
I can see the writing on the wall and how more and more voters are starting to vote with their heads rather than their hearts.
The brazen and humiliating corruption, lacklustre economy and uncertain future has all but severed the emotional connection many voters felt with the party that brought us liberation.
I suspect many people see this 25th year of our democracy as a watershed; the end of the trial, growing pains period that was wholly deserved, but also wholly squandered because of greed and demagoguery.
All the goodwill that had been built up over the years is gone.
All we see now are the failures and the missed opportunities to seize the rainbow promises of 1994 and make them into the economic and social miracle that was within our grasp back then.
Because it was allowed to slip through our fingers, the hard work has to begin all over again.
It’s going to take just one more nefarious arms deal revelation, or one more Nkandla fire pool; or curry-bribing Zuptagate; cheapskate MPs pocketing travel vouchers; or Prasa locomotive deal for voters to revolt.
But Ramaphosa must understand that it’s no longer just a matter of rooting out corruption; that’s not going to be enough for the 2024 voters.
It’s going to have to go hand-in-hand with accelerated service delivery, economic opportunities and ensuring that elusive ‘better life for all’.
There is a lost generation of citizens who accepted that things were going to take time post-1994.
They sacrificed living the dream themselves for the greater good - the hope that it would at least benefit their children one day.
It’s their children that our leaders need to be concerned with now; they are young, ambitious, hungry for opportunities, and a lot less patient than their parents were.
This younger generation has the privilege of an instant global lens through which to view and compare their circumstances.
As millennials, information is at their fingertips, so they feel much more entitled to opportunities than their peers elsewhere in the world have; and they are used to adopting and driving rapid change to achieve it.
That complete lack of sentimentality means there will be no love lost between them as voters and the old liberation movements relying on nostalgia and emotional votes.
It’s a brave new world that we helped to create for them, so we can’t blame them for wanting what was promised.
So while the build-up may have been dull, I do believe many voters exercised one final bit of patience.
Our young voters either didn’t show up, or because of political ignorance, still voted along with their parents.
Politicians are now going to have to work very hard to earn their votes next time.
Our leaders better listen closely for the similarities between a clarion call and a death knell.
Oh, and if you guys can also just remember to remove your election posters from the lamp posts, please; that would be nice!
Millennials are also very environmentally-friendly.