In order to lead effectively, every leader, including state presidents need to be able to communicate with the people on topical issues. To that effect, lucrative positions have been created to employ people who are capable of crafting powerful and relevant messages for various occasions, messages that capture the mood at the time.
In the case of national presidents, the individuals who are recruited into the president’s communication team are duly required to manage the president’s message in ways that appeals to the public or audience.
Bearing in mind that state presidents do not have much time to regularly address their people, it follows that whenever presidents do finally get the time to address their publics, their messages should have powerful content that not only match the stature of the office but most importantly engage the people. That is even so when the nation is under siege as is the case with our republic at this moment in time.
Like most countries of the world, Botswana is presently being ravaged by the COVID-19 pandemic in that are beyond imagination. Thus, when it was announced that His Excellency Dr Masisi will address the nation on Tuesday 13th July 2021 expectations shot through the window as people wished for a kind of a breakthrough in our response to the pandemic.
The president’s address was duly announced and passionately publicized through government communication channels. Beyond the usual publicity platforms at the disposal of the Office of the President, the ruling Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) joined the fray to market and hype the president’s address giving the impression that this was a message of hope not to be missed. Given the nation’s desperation for COVID-19 vaccines, we give it all our attention.
It promised to make it to the list of speeches that charged the world. When President Dr Masisi kept on reading and reading without any clear message coming out, he was nevertheless given the benefit of doubt with fingers crossed that, like an elegant soapbox orator or matured bearer of bad news, he had reserved the best for the final part of his address.
It was only when President Dr Masisi started the first of his many concluding remarks that it became clear that the central message was about making the people already deflated and on the verge of giving up any hopes of getting vaccinated, to wait much longer.
If that statement did sound like death sentence, it surely demonstrated that the wheels of government were grinding to a halt and that acknowledgment literally crushed spirits, because it was a case of ratcheting up expectations and dismally failing to deliver. It was a speech that would have been better had it not been delivered at all.
It is also worth noting that the address was advertised as COVID-19 update by President Dr Masisi but it then morphed into an update about anything and everything such that the president’s message had no central theme for appeal and was therefore patently hopeless, if not annoying.
After spending close to an hour talking about a variety of issues that were hardly interconnected, President Dr Masisi announced that schools would close and that everything else would remain unchanged including our anxiety and despondency, shattering hopes and sending people to their Creator.
While the speech illuminated the nation’s problems, it offered no solutions whatsoever. In fact it felt as though the president used the address to give us the middle finger. President Dr Masisi’s address couldn’t at least flatter; it couldn’t persuade much less win the hearts of desperate people staring at death.
Though we have had poorly written president speeches before, this one will go down as one of the worst ever in the history of this republic. This wasn’t only a pedestrian national address, it was an embarrassment and one gets the feeling that those who put it together deliberately did a poor job to spite and humiliate the president.
It was indeed a flat speech that certainly damaged the presidency, the cause it sought to address and Batswana as a nation. The speech actually made the wolves hungrier and then threw the president under the bus.
Speech writers are required to protect the president from silly, schoolboy errors such as that plagued President Dr Masisi immediate past speech. They are required to remember that the President has an agenda to advance such that his message ought to appeal to the masses by using beautiful words to lift morale especially now when the chips are down.
President Dr Masisi is not a great speaker and hardly oozes charisma and energy when speaking in public. It is the duty of his speech writers to compensate for his weaknesses with captivating, momentous and thought-provoking speeches that are emotionally engaging, relevant and able to inspire confidence in government’s interventions so as to give people hope as well as challenge them to play their small part.
It is the job of the speech writers to craft speeches that capture the mood of the time while projecting the president as a competent, determined and focused superintendent who have everything under control.
A combination of an appalling, dreadful speech, lethargic delivery with the president clearly without energy by any standards and the tired exposition perhaps generated by the teleprompter served to make the occasion to be remembered as the day President Masisi reminded people that they were on their own.
A state president’s national address, especially during these times when people have put their last faith in their government, should not be like a hurried, unedited speech delivered by a cheapskate at a poorly organized stag party.
A state president’s speech ought to be put together by a team of advisors and fact-checkers to spare the president and the nation embarrassment due to silly and laughable inaccuracies and errors as when on 13th July 2021, President Dr Masisi begged people to start prayer services beginning the past Sunday, also wrong dated as 8th July 2021. It would seem that President Dr Masisi’s speech was never proof-read and fact-checked before it was placed on the president’s desk.
Whereas poorly written speeches reflect on and damage the image and reputation of the president first and foremost, they also reveal a lot about the speech writers especially their careless attitudes and their veiled intents. That is why speech writers are often made to take responsibility for making the President appear like a legend of a fraud.
President Dr Masisi’s incoherent speech that is devoid of content and context could only have been deliberately designed to comprehensively damage his reputation and render him a complete joke.
Other than the fact that President Dr Masisi mumbled read to the end, there was very little to pick from the long address and as the president slurred to his last conclusion of his numerous conclusions, it really felt like inside job sabotage – some of his trusted lieutenants are most likely sabotaging him.
Proficient leaders generally would prefer to familiarize themselves with their speeches well ahead of the occasion so that they not only flag inaccuracies but much more importantly own content.
If President Dr Masisi has adopted the approach of advanced reading and re-reading, he would have noticed the unusual, numerous mistakes that amounted to a deliberate campaign of sabotage. That he did not pick obvious inaccuracies laid bare his lackadaisical approach to the job of a state president.
It has to be noted that speech writers are not insulated from capture and may at times find themselves having to do someone’s bidding, which is why some people have had to veer off script to avoid a trap.
If the writers of President Masisi’s recent speech never intended to embarrass the president, then they were at best complacent and at worst incompetent. Whichever way we look at it, it cannot be right for us as a nation to let this unfortunate incident just pass like as if we are not bothered.
The public must demand an explanation from the Office of the President because that speech amounted to a monumental national embarrassment and someone must take responsibility. This is necessary to avoid a repeat of what happened on Tuesday 13th July 2021. We, the people of the Republic of Botswana, demand accountability, nothing more, nothing less.
In a moment of distress such as this, we demand the highest level of gravitas from the highest office so that all others below are challenged and inspired to demonstrate capable leadership as the nation grapples with the devastating pandemic.
It has to be remembered that the pandemic is a test of competency and leadership for those charged with managing the affairs of the state and all those who are careless and sloppy with their official duties, from the state president to the lowest ranked employee, should be court-martialed for dereliction of duty.
