Election manifestos are pretty much wish lists. Some political parties thumb suck theirs, dressing them up with what they regard as promises, liberally wrapped in fancy words, like eradicate and moratorium. Parties who've done this whole election thing before will have saved their manifestos on flash drives, so expect rushed cut and paste jobs this year, where language is only slightly tweaked and political objectives are made to sound even more orotund, abstruse and, let's never forget, unobtainable. Poetic licence is tested when political jargon is mashed and mangled with theatrics. How many times have we heard 'Pushing back the frontiers of poverty' at rallies.
Of course elections have nothing to do with morals and ethics, otherwise Truman Prince would've been laid to rest in the cemetery of politics and Julius Malema would've had his jaw wired shut. Nope, it's all about lofty ideals and laughable promises. Honesty has never lived in the same neighbourhood as politics so that's never an issue. We're expected to join politicians and take leave of our senses and intelligence over this period.
But you got to love it when a party flagrantly abandons reality. I'm not even talking about the DA's persistent dreams of seeing Helen Zille delivering a State of the Nation (instead of Province) address. I'm talking about stripped down to the bone madness.
It's treacherous driving in Cape Town at the best of times. But try maintain your composure behind the wheel if you happen to come across one of the Cape Party's election posters. I still erupt into laughter each time I read them. 'Declare the Cape independent' scream their posters to unsuspecting motorists. Here's a political grouping (read: 2 guys and a fax machine) which has almost solely based it's entire existence on one ideal (and for the sake of my credibility I daren't call it anything else but that)on one bold, if not misguided manifesto point. Firstly, let me salute this party for being, well, for want of a better word, brave. I know parties are known to embellish and dress the truth up. But the Cape Party hasn't only abandoned is credibility, it's lost touch with reality.
Okay, so it's not exactly the strongest of issues to base a manifesto on. Neither is poverty eradication. At least the party's being honest, albeit amid peels of raucous laughter and derision at those nauseating televised roundtable debates. I've witnessed this with my own eyes. At one such debate the Party's, Jack Miller, courageously stated, without a hint of sarcasm, the time for the Cape to secede from the rest of the country is now. That's was in 2009. Now, I know it feels sometimes as if Cape Town is another planet compared to it's slick, arrogant, obnoxious distant neighbour, Johannesburg, but it's still very much part of the rest of the country, despite Zille's best efforts.
It seems the Cape Party hasn't even tried to reword it's manifesto for the 2011 local government polls. What's to reword, it's one sentence, really. Maybe 'declare' could've been substituted with 'demand' (the ANC has many a time demanded an end to corruption, as if that makes sense). There a bunch of synonyms for 'independent'. Maybe their party election budget didn't extend to a thesaurus.
The banner greeting you as you enter the party's web site says 'Free the Cape'. Even more bombastic. I love it! Maybe they are not so far from the paradox of politics as I thought. Perhaps they've hit the nail on the head. Politics is all about distant ideals and a detachment from reality. Spend just a day in Parliament, that greenhouse of lies and absurdity. It may be that the Cape Party is simply doing what most parties are thinking - being outrageously and ultimately hopelessly misguided.
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