Paul Shipale
The opinion piece by Sibuku Malumbano in New Era Newspaper, 2nd September 2024, argued for political parties to offer the public accurate information about their party’s policies, a clear vision and political objectives to allow voters to make informed decisions instead of political sloganeering as a tool for campaigning.
Teboho Bojabotsheha, from Vaal University of Technology in South Africa, says that Babbie and Mouton (2004:495) point out that discourse analysis is a complex process that is better suited to those who are interested in theorising about life. In the context of this article, I am interested in theorising about the election manifestos of political parties in Namibia.
There are polarised views about the value of election manifestos, with a number of negative views. Some assert that in most democracies few people actually read them, but what matters is popular perception of a party’s identity and what it stands for. Others suggest that party election manifestos are over-rated, finding them sometimes particularly long and complex for the illiterate voter and cynically arguing that party election manifestos seldom persuade voters and should be seen as one of several factors, including gifts of Brötchen and Boerewors Sausage Rolls, which influence people’s voting choices.
To McKinley (2009), election manifestos are essentially propaganda tools containing very broad visions of the respective political parties, thinly sketched frameworks for societal development and a host of promises around more specific policy problems and challenges. Petlane (2009:1) believes that party election manifestos, hardly read by anyone, range from “mere sloganeering to monumental tomes packed with dry bureaucratic – academic – political – speak”. Petlane’s (2009:1) alternative to party election manifestos in their current form are ‘demand-driven manifestos’ which he says are more inclusive.
Whether we agree with the above views or not, to me the election manifestos share certain common specific sequential structures and features, which include a message of the presidential candidate; a statement of achievements, challenges and justification; vision, plans, programmes and implementation measures as well as concluding remarks.
For the purpose of this article, the election manifestos can be seen, following Chouliaraki and Fairclough (1999:21), as “shifting articulations of symbolic/discursive resources (such as genre, discourse, voices) which themselves come to be articulated into relative permanence as moments of discourse, and transformed in that process”. Like other manifestos, they present the “strategic direction and outlines of prospective legislation” (Scruton 1982:358), to be expected in the event the organisation received enough votes from the electorate to serve in government.
I will attempt to analyse the manifestos in terms of genre and its sequential structure, pronouns, intertextuality, contrasting expressions, grounding and elisions, and the discourse of ‘total freedom’, which is actually an integral part of the dominant hegemonic discourse of politics in Africa in general and Namibia in particular, fuelled by globalisation and its economic imperatives.
At the heart of the languages used in the manifestos are linguistic devices, techniques and strategies used by the political parties to position themselves as the only parties in the country that are fit to govern. These devices, techniques and strategies include; ambiguous pronouns. The election manifestos are characterised by an ambiguity in their use of pronouns, such as ‘we’ and ‘our’ etcetera.
Firstly, there is an attempt to build up an affinity between the author of the manifestos and the audience. The same inclusive pronouns are used to build up an affinity between the parties and the audience with respect to the work which still needs to be done. Lastly, there is also an attempt to build up an affinity between the parties and the audience to position their visions as shared ones.
The use of inclusive pronouns such as ‘we’ and ‘our’ has the effect of blurring the distinction between the parties and the audience. The audience becomes one with the parties and, in this process of becoming, the parties share their achievements and failures.
The use of these inclusive pronouns is actually consistent with the inclusive or “plain-folk” technique which, according to Zheng (2000:2), functions to assimilate the speaker into the group or groups and then to win the support of members of these groups. In this case the technique functions to include the parties as members or integral part of the people whose votes the parties are targeting. What the inclusive pronouns do as well is to bestow the parties with the authority to speak as parties ruling on behalf of and together with all the potential electorate. The manifestos themselves are bestowed with the authority to speak as documents which belong to all the citizens, regardless of differences based on race, gender, class, etcetera.
The manifestos draw a very sharp contrast between the apartheid system before 1990 and the ensuing democratic system through contrasting expressions. Specific contrasting expressions are used to portray the earlier period as diametrically opposed to the later one, from expressions such as ‘oppression’, ‘exploitation’, ‘despair’ and ‘evil’ to others such as ‘freedom’, ‘hope’ and ‘good’. Other terms used to describe the period of the apartheid system include ‘neglect’, ‘indignity’, ‘relations of hatred/enmity’, ‘disrespect’ and ‘depravity’. Terms used to describe the period of the democratic system include ‘better quality of life’, ‘peace and dignity’, ‘united nation’, ‘relations of friendship with the international community’.
The stark contrast helps lull the audience into identifying with the democratic system as well as the party, in this case of the ruling party, for having ushered in, single handedly, the revolutionary, progressive and transformative political system and all the achievements associated with it. Any opposition to the ruling party by implication is tantamount to nostalgia for and identification with the pre-1990 period and its characteristic evil system of apartheid, and opposition to the post-1990 period of democracy and accompanying achievements and successes brought about by the ruling party.
In all of the election manifestos the ruling party is foregrounded as the organisation which not only brought freedom but also led the struggle for change and transformative vision. The ruling party is also foregrounded as the organisation with an appropriate vision of a non-racial and democratic country; an organisation which had accumulated the relevant experience to realise the said vision and has the capacity and resources to speed up “the journey to a better life.”
Nothing is said, whatsoever, about the engagement of other political parties. Evident here is their elision – or omission – which can be equated to their backgrounding. There is thus a foregrounding of the ruling party and what it has done and a backgrounding, through elision, of other political parties for political hegemony.
The election manifestos remind the audience that it was that party only, not any other contending political party, which “has introduced laws to protect workers; created machinery to negotiate wages and working conditions; set minimum wages for domestic workers, farm workers, hospitality, taxi workers and security sectors and established maximum hours of work for all. Thus, the party is “best placed to lead the country in the right direction, ensuring growth that is equitable and sustainable, as well as prosperity for all our citizens”.
We have seen this with McHenry Venaani of PDM saying his party has tabled several motions in Parliament and the party’s health portfolio has been putting the government on the spot. They brought the idea that the middleman in the health sector must come to an end when it comes to the procurement of medicine and that today, thanks to PDM, there are dialysis centres in the country.
As far as the ruling party SWAPO’s election manifesto is concerned, it will probably promise to lower the cost of living, reduce unemployment, poverty and inequality and “intensify economic transformation and make sure that the State actively retains the strategic assets of the economy, maximum natural resources beneficiation, creating a conducive environment for sports and creative industries to thrive and most importantly, dealing with education’s new curriculum ambiguity.”
This was said by SWAPO Party Youth League Secretary Efraim Nekongo when he appealed to SWAPO’s Presidential candidate Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah at a SWAPO Oshana Youth Rally held in Ongwediva. In addition, Nekongo pleaded with the SWAPO Presidential candidate to erase students’ debts and move away from loans to student grants, deal with corruption and the backlog of housing provision, and ensure equitable health care and social services, agricultural transformation and food security, as well as protect state-own enterprises against sabotage and subsequent liquidation. However, the question is; is there a capable team that is able to respond to these challenges?
This is possible if the party attracts, from the upcoming Electoral College or ‘pot’, as it is known in SWAPO lexicon, skilled people with abilities that can help the country in the transformation agenda. I therefore agree with SWAPO seasoned politicians and veterans, Nahas Angula and Helmut Angula who urged the delegates to the SWAPO Electoral College to look for candidates who can represent the party in the National Assembly and represent the broader populace in terms of competence, gender, the country’s demographic, economic status, the youth, the poor and marginalised etc.
Nevertheless, I hear that there are rumours of long knives out to stab others in the back, including plots to oust the older generation from the contest, similar to what happened in PDM when the youth out manoeuvred older politicians and kicked them out of the central committee. The danger with such a move is that the government will have no institutional memory from experienced and competent crop of politicians. Secondly, if the rumours making the rounds are true, then the politics of the belly fuelling lies, as it was written by Faustinus Shikukutu in the New Era Newspaper of 08.03.2024, is really upon us.
Shikukutu said the politics of the belly have turned politics into the dirtiest game ever to be played by homo sapiens because these days, politics is no longer practised in the best interest of the people, but rather, in the best interest of the belly of the opportunists and self-centred, incompetent and unethical individuals who suffocate themselves with party scarves and dancing or singing the loudest at political rallies so that they can be parachuted to the political tabernacle. “With the 2024 election campaign taking off, many so-called politicians are scrambling to get closer to those with political muscle to be remembered and considered for various political or government positions when the election dust settles”, said Shikukutu.
I am afraid that it seems our body politics has been penetrated by what others call “a pact between the elite and capital” who attempt to buy their spot at the dinner table with their deep pockets and favouring buddies who are rewarded with lucrative post due to their loyalty to certain people and not to an ideology or to the political programme of the party. As we all know, the winning camp or faction from the SWAPO Party 2022 Congress belongs to the current VP of SWAPO, considered a diplomat with charisma who was touted to run her campaign on an anti-corruption ticket.
It is a pity if the ‘clean candidate campaign’ would be smeared with mud of political patronage giving individuals or groups political offices, money, material goods, and power in return for political support during an election. This is related to the practice of “political clientism,” in which material goods or favors are given to those who supported a party or candidate in an election. Others are holding their breath hoping to be part of the selected few to be included in the list of ten members to enter Parliament on the SWAPO Party List while others are hoping to be included in the President’s list of eight non-voting members of Parliament.
I therefore implore all those who are going to attend the SWAPO Party Electoral College to desist from the above practices and avoid factionalism of the ‘neo-liberal’ vs ‘the radical transformation’ factions or ‘the older generation of Baby Boomers and Gen X’ vs ‘the newest generation of the born-free or the Gen Y or Millennials and the Gen Z’ factions.
Let me repeat here that this confluence of circumstances present the SWAPO Party with a unique opportunity to forge a social compact and move the country forward and to greater heights with the strategic centre of power commanding both authority and legitimacy deriving from both the qualitative ideas arising from theory and praxis of all the motive forces in a generational mix.
Gone are the days of ‘dynasty politics’ and those behaving as the don pedros or padrinos of the cosa nostra, like bosses of all bosses, who look after bambinos, as if others were their little children.
In an article written by Brandon Hogan, J.D., Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Howard University, Washington, DC, titled; Frantz Fanon’s Engagement With Hegel’s Master-Slave Dialectic, Hogan posits that Fanon embraces Hegel’s abstract conception of freedom as both him and Hegel believe that mutual recognition is necessary if an individual or a group is to have a coherent self-conception.
Hegel’s dialectic is usually presented in three stages of development: a thesis that leads to its reaction; an antithesis that contradicts or negates the thesis; and the tension between the two is resolved by a synthesis.
According to Hogan, we would do best to understand Fanon as claiming that Blacks are not masters not because they do not own slaves, but because they do not set their own values, but simply adopt the values of whites. A master, in this sense, possesses one element of Hegelian freedom. The master abides by norms of his own choosing.
Some Blacks, for Fanon, have adopted the master’s attitude in that they take themselves to be autonomous. The Black slave, in this context, recognizes the authority of white values, but has no conception of his own authority. Thus, for Fanon, the historical aim of Black struggle has been that of becoming white. Political freedom and learned inferiority, in this case, exist as barriers to Black worth and Black self- recognition.
Let us stop mimicking other people’s values and norms. How could people who have their umbilical cords buried in the same kraal or garden and who were comrades in arms yesterday in the struggle fighting a common enemy turn against each other and now some behave as if they are masters of others simply because of their connection to capital? Let us value each other and stop the back-biting, the back-stabbing and the pull-down syndrome. Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of my employer and this newspaper but solely my personal views as a citizen.
