THE COLLAPSE OF AN ORATOR ?; The Ugandan President Should Hire The Services Of A Speech Writer

THE COLLAPSE OF AN ORATOR ?; The Ugandan President Should Hire The Services Of A Speech Writer AS Soon As Possible

Those who have listened to President Yoweri Museveni in the last 34 years will tell you that he can be a captivating speaker with a wealth of idioms and folk stories which he uses during his speeches.

He is one man who can employ common sense to practical issues and convince his audience with practical solutions to issues that look very complicated in a very simplistic manner. He is rich in history , humor and enjoys an abundance of knowledge about so many things.

For a long time, most Ugandans have looked forward to his speeches because there are so many points of reference to pick from his speeches.  He was the man to watch and his speeches were captivating.  The only problem was his occasional stammering. But it was bearable given the good message he would give the audience.

THE COLLAPSE OF AN ORATOR

But of recent there has been a change in the speaking abilities of the Ugandan president. His speaking powers have systematically deteriorated with the passing of time.

There is an obvious lack of research in what the president speaks. He seems to have suffered from intellectual inertia. He either takes the audience for granted or doesn’t have the assistance he needs to address the country.

His tendency to repeat what he says in his speeches is very embarrassing. His advisors may not tell him or advise him about this, but the truth is that he needs to be assisted.

In the last one month, the Ugandan president has addressed the country 23 times, (the 22 of those speeches have been about covid19), while the latest made on 1^st may was about the Labor Day.

In the most recent speeches, he has repeated himself so much that all his speeches are identical.

In his Labor Day speech, he talked about increasing pay for the scientists, a point he has labored to make for the last ten years.  His reference to Shakespeare not being able t deal with the Owen falls dam was a joke he made during his 22^nd speech repeated again in his Labor Day speech.

He also made reference to the economic growth rate of 1994 in his previous speech and repeated it again on Labor Day.

Now this is not t suggest that the president lacks what to say. There are lots and lots of issues he needs to talk about without repeating himself.  The country has got a lot going on that you can spend the whole year speaking about a different issue in every speech.

WHAT WAS EXPECTED?

In his Labor Day speech Ugandans expected to hear figures in the labor market, which sector has employed more Ugandans which one has declined etc.

He should have briefed the country about the labor we export to Dubai and other places and the fate of those Ugandans especially in china where they are faced with xenophobia. But he instead meandered back to his previous speech.

THE TRENDS 

Although African leaders don’t need to be orators to ascend to the highest office, they need to have some ability to articulate issues on a daily basis.

Evidence shows that most African leaders are very poor orators. Most of them speak slowly in a big voice of an elderly person to command respect from the audience.

Former Kenyan president Daniel Arap Moi was so poor, you would slumber when he showed up on the television to speak. Another Former Kenyan president Mwai Kibaki was even worse, for he spoke like someone was about t die.

Kenyans are unlucky that even current president Uhuru Kenyatta is as poor an orator as his predecessors.

But former Ugandan dictator Idi Amin lacked the intellectual power to captivate his audience but he was comical enough to make an interesting speech, notwithstanding the poor content of his message. 

To-date there are things Amin spoke that Ugandans recite 40 years after the fall of his regime.  Illiterate as he was, he had the talents to captivate the audience with unbelievable humour.

On the other hand Tanzanian iconic president Mwalimu Julius Nyerere was a superb orator who would turn the audience into a class with some pedestrian intellect.  Mwalimu Nyerere was an entertainer with the ability to explain serious issues in a very comical way.

Leaders like Apollo Milton Obote , Kwame Nkrumah , Patrick Lumumba were natural orators with the ability to captivate the audience from the western countries mostly  because they were conditioned to lead African countries with the style of the western civilization.

In more developed democracies, the first quality that someone needs to ascend the highest office in the land is his oratory abilities. People like former American president Barrack Obama became a worldwide brand because of his oratory skills. 

THE GUN EFFECT

But when you look at leaders who emerged through the barrel of the gun, you will find a terrible lack of oratory form them. Col Muamar Ghadafi, for instance, used to speak very slowly about nonsensical issues.  He never cared about what the audience thought of his speeches. the late Libyan leader was a total mess.

The late Col Ghadafi had no flair, no content, no substance in his speeches. It was obvious that he had no speech writer to guide him on what to say, even to audiences as big as the United Nations.

I think the same ‘poor speech virus’ has attacked president Museveni. In most cases he seems to enjoy the idea of having an audience to convene speeches, but appears not to have anything new to say.

He simply gathers facts from his previous speeches and gets on with it. I will never forget the day Museveni embarrassed Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu by praising the role he played in supporting the Palestinians. He was obviously speaking revolutionary stuff but to the wrong man. Museveni was oblivious of the fact that Israel considers the PLO to be a terrorist organization.

The way forward

The Ugandan president obviously needs the services of a speech writer.

The speech writer will save the president from making strategic errors in speech like he made to Benjamin Netanyahu.  Employing the services of a speech writer doesn’t mean that you are dull or intellectually inept. It simply means that you respect the principal of division of labor.

It also saves you from repeating yourself or giving speeches considered to be monotonous to the audiences. The speech writer can research about a given subject matter and equip you with historical perspectives together with the current trends of what you have to speak about.

The author Fred Daka Kamwada is a social critic, political analyst and a blogger

kamwadafred@gmail.com