Museveni’s sloppiness in the State-of-the-Nation Address
Sometimes speeches and documents from the President’s Office are written in such a slipshod manner that they read like Facebook posts written sloppily by some of Uganda’s graduates who are, to all intents and purposes, illiterate.
The prize example is the State-of-the-Nation Address, which President Museveni delivered on June 4. (You can find others on the State House website.) I struggled to believe I was reading a presidential address from the highest office in the land.
To be fair, the President is not supposed to be a fine writer. Being a great writer is not a requirement for his job. And, crucially, presidents have speech writers. However, if the president decides to write his speeches himself, he should make sure that someone proofreads them to ensure everything is as it should be.
Here is what I saw when I read the State-of-the-Nation address. Every sentence is reproduced verbatim. Nothing is made up. (I think that a Primary Seven pupil at a good school would do better.)
1. This vulnerable economy, also happens to be the economy of leisure and pleasure.
2. Leisure and pleasure, are optional.
3. The vulnerable portions of the economy, have collapsed.
4. In the area of manufacturing medicines, there are young Ugandans that have been being tossed around and even persecuted by the unpatriotic and colonial agents in the system.
5. They are all built-up now, especially, especially with factories, factories.
6. However, I direct UPDF to take an aerial map of that area that will show us the factories already in the wetlands or being built, so that no new ones will added.
7. The economics of Africa are correctly described as under-developed because, indeed, they have alot of potential which is not fully utilised.
8. Those who thought that not much would come out of Naads, should do something to themselves, maybe kwetuga (suicide), out of honour, because what they laughed at has now pushed Ugandan’s production of coffee from four million, 60kgs bags, to seven million bags.
9. Let us stand for a minute of silence to remember, them. May their souls in eternal peace.
The real problem is that many Ugandans reading this article will not even see anything wrong with these sentences. That is the tragedy of our education system.
Some will say that I completely ignored the gist of the president’s address and seized on minor issues. They are not minor. Presidential speeches in countries where presidents take their work seriously do not look and read like what our president gives us. This sloppiness makes me shake my head in utter disbelief.
It makes me wonder whether we can ever compete with nations where people do things in meticulous detail. Sloppiness has become a national problem. The address in question was reproduced verbatim by a major Kampala newspaper.
I have read articles written by Ugandans with three degrees, some PhDs, but the articles sometimes have whole sentences that just do not make sense.
Journalists, for example, are supposed to be professionals who write clearly and accurately. However, many in Uganda—and some have more than 15 years of work experience—cannot even use a semi-colon properly.
In 2018, an article published by a major daily about the high failure rate of law students taking exams to join the LDC quoted the Law Council as saying that some candidates did not even know what abbreviations like JJA (Justices of Appeal) stand for. Some thought it means Jinja; others thought it stands for June, July and August.
The writer is a journalist and former
Al Jazeera digital editor in charge of the Africa desk
[email protected] @kazbuk
