Given its characterisation as manipulation of power, political communication might be supposed to be an extremely productive source of metaphorical language, since every good metaphor sets 'new frontiers' (itself a typical American political metaphor) and is at the same time sufficiently vague and fuzzy to allow varying, ever new interpretations. But the analysis of one specific area, i.e. the case of the South African policy of apartheid reveals that this assumption is not confirmed. In contrast to various other areas of public communication, such as religion, science, journalism, sports, advertising etc., political communication may very well be less creative in metaphor use than is generally assumed or one might expect. For the present study I have selected from a wider survey of materials (Dirven, 1994) a number of statements by South African leaders on the official policy of apartheid. Although it would be very premature to make from these few statements and their analysis any generalisations about political communication, the conclusions reached here cannot be the result of mere coincidence, and may therefore be used as the basis for hypotheses about the nature of political communication in general. The corpus analysis reveals that metaphors in politics are used to serve a programmatic function, i.e. the formulation and communication of long-term policies, which may comprise and enforce general stereotypes, attitudes, expectations, models for planning and even political action; on the other hand, this programmatic use of metaphors may help to camouflage the absence of any such policies or substantial changes in them, as seems to be the case in the present deadlock of political communication in South Africa. (René Dirven)