South African suburbs are infamously isolated: gated communities and high walls which can leave us feeling somewhat cut off from our neighbours. As a result, it would be entirely understandable if – for example – despite the current build-up of election fever you had no idea whether or not your ward is historically an ANC stronghold, a DA redoubt or even the last surviving COPE enclave outside of Thabo Mbeki’s shed.

There are exceptions. If the bulk of your neighbours are part of the pro-Julius EFF vanguard, the chances are you already know about it. But for every one else who wants to learn a little bit more about the voter dynamics of their area – perhaps with an eye to strategic voting in 2014 – there’s this. A new tool developed by civic hackers at Code4SA and published by the Mail&Guardian.

It’s called ‘Know Your Hood’, and at the moment simply serves up results from the 2009 general election based on the ward you live in. Just enter your address in the search bar, and the results are almost instantaneous. While it’s passably interesting in its own right, what’s really intriguing is that it’s just the start of a much bigger project aimed at increasing civic awareness and access to information using data openly available in South Africa but little used.

The current Know Your Hood project is here at the Mail & Guardian. If you want to play around with the Code4SA ward data gateway and use it for your own local data projects, you’ll find the core project over here. The plan, according to Code4SA’s Adi Eyall, is to create an uber repository of open data that can tell you lots about the place you are, right now. Something, in fact, a little like this (which is well worth checking out if you live in Cape Town).