ANTHONY BUTLER: Promises, promises: it’s party manifesto season again

As SA enters party manifesto season, many of the journalists and academics who are paid to study politics have been wondering whether they really need to read them.       

After all, only a tiny minority of citizens ever leaf through the pages of a manifesto. Party platforms tend to be long on good intentions but short on detail. Because they are the outcome of internal party compromises, they contain promises that the party does not intend to keep and goals it does not know how to realise.

Campaigning politicians understandably tell electors what they want to hear. They run into trouble pretty quickly when they write down what they really think. In one famous cautionary tale from 1983, the endearing but shambolic leader of Britain’s Labour Party, Michael Foot, decided to incorporate the actual policy resolutions adopted at the party’s national conference into the manifesto.

These included unilateral nuclear disarmament, higher taxes, withdrawal from the European Community and widespread nationalisation. One of the party’s MPs described the manifesto as “the longest suicide note in history”. This judgment proved correct on election day.

For its part, the ANC has a dangerous habit of setting out some concrete goals. Its 2019 manifesto, for example, promised that freight would be shifted from road to rail, clean water would reach all citizens, local government finances would be transformed and “decisive action” would be taken against corruption. In the light of what actually transpired we can expect clear targets to be replaced by vague generalities this year.

Rise Mzansi has already got our manifesto season off to a hilarious start. There is much to admire about the new movement and its leader. But the party for some reason insists that its manifesto was written by the people themselves — “an outcome of almost a year of listening and discussion with hundreds of communities across our land”. It is not clear who is expected to believe this claim.

Despite their limitations, we should nonetheless read manifestos. First, citizens view an election win as a “mandate” for implementing a manifesto. While this claim is problematic — voters can choose only one party and they may not agree with all of its policies — this is a key element of democracy.

Second, manifestos are important benchmarks for accountability. Given citizens’ short attention spans and politicians’ unreliable memories, a party platform is essential for assessing if a party has done what it promised — or anywhere close. Door-to-door campaigning and targeted social media communications now allow differentiated campaign messages — or lies — to be disseminated to individual voters.

There is a shift under way in democratic societies towards strategic deception. The traditional media can no longer perform their traditional role as gatekeeper of the truth because of the volume of information on social media platforms and a decline in citizens’ deference to expert and media authority. A manifesto document is now the only place in which the party’s values and central policy can be explored by all citizens together.

Third, there is evidence that the stability of coalitions is related to the policy congruence of the parties that make it up. In the possible absence of a majority victor this May, party manifestos — once they are appropriately interpreted — are an important tool for predicting the likelihood of enduring coalitions.

We evidently need to read manifestos cautiously and in full recognition of their limitations. Some parties do not seem to believe what they say — who believes the DA’s policies on social grants and public health, for example? Other parties offer no indication whatsoever that they know how to accomplish their supposed goals (the EFF?).

However, citizens remain capable of making a judgment about the credibility of such parties’ manifesto pledges.

• Butler teaches public policy at the University of Cape Town.