Go out on November the fourth and take all your friends and associates with you and if you live in Johannesburg go and vote for Helen Zille on both ballots. This is the best thing you can do to secure your future, save South Africa, secure a better future for all the country’s people, and do right by one of the most heroic figures South Africa has ever produced.

Last week The Common Sense’s Gabriel Makin spoke to Zille at length on this newspaper’s YouTube channel. At 28 minutes in, Helen broke down about the horrors of stunted and malnourished children she has witnessed in drug-addled homes in poor communities across the city. A grandmother herself, she spoke of how elderly people across the city try to save their grandchildren from such devastating circumstances – but that there is no help.

This has been Helen’s entire life. The fake news campaigns run about her in much of the media of the past decade are one of the most disgusting frauds ever perpetrated against South Africa’s people. It was all lies. Complete lies. None of it was true. A racist who did not want black leaders? Fake – just straight up fake news. Now deep in her seventies, she has come to Johannesburg, where she faces great physical danger and the daily threat of assassination, to do it all again. She was told, “Helen they are going to try and kill you” – but she did not care. She lives modestly, has no wealth. Just care.

We, you, all of us owe it to her, to the country and the city to turn up on 4 November and show that you know now who she is and what she has done. This will be her final campaign and drawing that X will, regardless of whether it gets her over the line, simply be the proper thing to have done for someone who has given her whole life for you. It does not matter if you are African National Congress or Democratic Alliance, black or white, left or right, rich or poor – the question of drawing that X supersedes all of that now, and you will not have the opportunity to vote for such a woman again.

Today The Common Sense has published the latest political data on the November election and the race for Johannesburg. Helen and her party are still short of what is needed but a swing of just 100 000 votes may put her over the line.