Manifesto: The Political Placebo

A manifesto is a useless political document normally produced by political parties in Namibia right before elections to appear sincere and serious about the country and its ignorant citizens.

In her work titled ‘Anti-Deception Immunity Boosters’, Sar Casm explains that it is much like a magician’s trick performed for blind and hungry people, who will sit down and eat anything, even with a vomitous, gut wrenching odour.

These types of presentations are performed exclusively to Namibian voters, as they have been debunked elsewhere else.

This type of document looks impressive at first glance, but upon closer inspection, it closely resembles the ominous stages of decomposing corpses. The scattered pieces appear random but soon start painting a picture that reflect the mental disorders that plague the overrated authors, sometimes known as ‘thinkers’.

Some political parties in Namibia have been accused of utilising large language models, otherwise known as artificial intelligence, to output documents just in time for launching publicly (Rui Tyitende, 2024).

Some are known to conjure the ancestral spirits at the Holy Fire for a complete document, which they later collect from the cow dung. Others do the rain dance in the Namib dunes and at Brandberg, and collect the pieces of the fire’s ashes. Others copy and paste from documents in the National Archives, dated as far back as 1978.

In his recent work ‘You Misspelled Manifesto’, Tyitende claimed to have put the entire Swapo manifesto into the AI tool known as ChatGPT and that it recognised the entire document as its own, with the exception of the cover design.

In support of this finding, the organisation Keyboard Warriors Namibia also released images presented as proof of a prompt and a corresponding output response from ChatGPT.

In a fit of curiosity, this writer engaged ChatGPT with a unique prompt: “Did the Swapo party of Namibia use you to generate their party manifesto recently?”

The response: “No, the Swapo Party of Namibia has not used me to generate their party manifesto or any related content. My purpose is to assist with information, writing and problem-solving across various topics. I do not participate in creating or endorsing political content unless specifically requested by a user for informational purposes.”

It is important to note that while ChatGPT denies having generated the document, it leaves a tiny sliver of doubt by saying that it would not do so “unless specifically requested by a user for informational purposes”. This leaves the impression that it may only have been asked to construct a manifesto “for informational purposes” and not to actually compile the entire document.

But let’s let bygones be bygones, just like the entire document will be in the bottom drawer come 21 March.

It is one thing for political parties to play the voters like yo-yos, but when the media gets involved and starts peddling the same ‘kaka’, it splatters everywhere.

The media plays a crucial role in promoting the hype surrounding Namibian manifestos due to a lack of newsworthy material. These already understaffed newsrooms always devote significant coverage to the launch of new manifestos, highlighting the most outlandish and unrealistic promises without question.

This creates a sense of excitement and anticipation among the electorate, even though there is little to no evidence to suggest that these promises will ever be fulfilled. In fact, nobody ever asks, “what happened the previous manifestos?”.

The media could play a more constructive role by focusing on the feasibility of manifesto proposals and holding political parties accountable for their promises. This can also be done by weighing the new promises and direction with the realities that hamper the current direction, such as funding for the thumb-sucked projects.

By providing voters with critical analysis and information, the media can help to dispel the illusions created by manifestos and promote informed decision-making.

Finally, manifestos are much like a father who signs the child’s birth certificate and disappears like the rain in Namibia, never to be seen again.

Mukuru uandje! When is it going to rain?

That is actually the one thing that none of these parties’ manifestos touched on. Namibia needs rain and as outlandish as all these manifestos sound, none of them promised to send a special envoy to negotiate for a more manageable and sustainable rain pattern with God.

Groot en dom!

PS: The literary works: ‘Anti-Deception Immunity Boosters’ by Sar Casm and ‘You Misspelled Manifesto’ by Rui Tyitende are made up – just like all the nonsense in the recently launched manifestos.