[civsoc-mw] Fwd: Ken Lipenga writings

[Cedrick Ngalande]

When I said the speech was a paraphrase of Lincoln address some wanted to
eat me alive.  Maybe they will listen to Ken Liprnga

On Tue, Jul 7, 2020 at 5:57 AM Joe Chingani <jchingani at gmail.com> wrote:

> *Ken Lipenga writings*
>
>
> Ken Lipenga
> Twoscores and sixteen years:
> a Mt. Michesi perspective
>
> I'm OK with Gettysburg.
>
> Some of the comments on the President's inaugural speech sound like
> literary criticism essays from my Chancellor College students a long time
> ago, and that is a good thing. It means the bar has been raised. The speech
> seems to signal a new higher level of public discourse, even if it may well
> have sent some folks scurrying to their history books.
>
> From a linguistic and literary point of view, my favorite takeaway is the
> metaphor of the fractured bones and the pain involved in correcting that.
> It is poignant that the President takes his example from an unfortunate
> family experience, which I think underscores a point about authenticity.
> The bit about being both a patient and physician would be well worth of a
> lengthy tutorial discussion in a literature class down at the college that
> God loves the most.
>
> As usual my comments are mostly confined to form, the linguistic and the
> literary, with the inevitable accidental slippages into content, there
> being many better qualified than me to dwell on the political and other
> merits of this historic speech. The issue of language of politics has
> always been an area of interest for me.
>
> So I am ok with the echoes of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.
>
> In fact it can be argued that this echo is a gesture of flattery to the
> Americans, sort of inviting them to work with the new Malawi whose
> leadership is presumably ready to make more than symbolic use of its
> acquaintance with American history. But that kind of sophisticated
> messaging would probably only work if we had a literate president in the
> White House.
>
> Besides, the Gettysburg address was made towards the end of the civil war
> which eventually made slavery illegal in the US. We know that some
> Americans have never accepted that outcome, and the issue is hot right now
> with the Black Lives Matter movement. It may or may not have been President
> Chakwera's intention but I think it's a good thing that there's that hint
> of this in his speech.
>
> There has been much praise flowing in the direction of the speech writer.
> That is inevitable. Regardless of how talented they may be, presidents and
> other rulers usually have someone else write their speeches for them, busy
> and weighed down as they are with matters of state.
>
> In an ideal world, the speech writer is invisible. The moment the speech
> is handed over to the president, the king, or the emperor, he or she takes
> all credit for it. It is his or her speech. The speech writer, who will
> most often be among those in the audience listening to it, does not
> normally whisper to those near him or her, boasting, "Did you hear that
> phrase? I'm the one who crafted it!"
>
> In reality, however, people always manage to trace the speech writer and
> indeed some speech writers have become celebrities or been been praised for
> changing the course of history. Some historic speeches, like the
> Gettysburg, end up being studied as literature at schools and colleges.
> When that happens the speech writer obviously becomes a person of interest,
> to use a modern phrase.
>
> In social media the writing of this speech is being attributed to one
> Pastor Sean Kampondeni, and the gentleman is being either praised or bashed
> depending on the standpoints of commentators.
>
> We have no formal proof of authorship, but the style, and probably other
> considerations, appear to support the assumption of Kampondeni's
> involvement. Come to think it, if I were President and had Sean Kampondeni
> within my reach, even as son law or as is being claimed or whatever, there
> would be no debate about who should write my inaugural speech; such is his
> talent in the areas of language and fluent thought.
>
> I have followed Pastor Kampondeni's writings for some time and along with
> people like Idriss Ali Nassah and others, he's just a breath of
> intellectual fresh air. At one point during the court proceedings in
> Lilongwe, he came out to find that his car had been broken into and some
> items stolen by some of those involved in the demonstrations. The way he
> wrote about that episode gripped me so much that I commented on Facebook
> about his extraordinary eloquence and analytical thought.
>
> Judging from his writings, the pastor does not seem to me to be the kind
> of person who would want to be publicly praised for the inaugural speech
> even if he did write it.
>
> Regardless of the speech's authorship, delivery was everything. I listened
> to the speech while I was doing something else, but at some point the
> President's passionate delivery stopped me in my tracks.
>
> Anybody who has written a speech for someone else will be familiar with
> the mortifying feeling when a carefully crafted set of rhetorical passages
> is delivered blandly, devoid of any soul or rhythm. So much poetry wasted
> by a philistine delivery. A humorous sentence read with a grim face. An
> important moment of pause ignored. For a speech to have impact, the speaker
> must feel the words. After all the speech is a script which the speaker
> must act out with his or her whole being.
>
> Having been written by human beings this speech was not going to be
> perfect but it did not have to be. Perhaps in future speech writers will
> spare us the deja by avoiding certain formulaic phrases that other
> commentators are beginning to notice from the performances so far. There's
> always room for improvement even after a "perfect" speech.
>
> There are those who would have liked to see more in the speech. That is
> understandable given that what has just happened in our country has the
> feel of a revolution of sorts. But it is also my view that an inaugural
> speech is not a budget speech. It is not supposed to give you details of
> what the new government is going to do, more so in view of the absence of a
> full cabinet. It is meant mainly to inspire and give a glimpse of a new
> philosophical paradigm.
>
> Today's delivery fitted that bill. Regardless of who wrote the speech, the
> souls of writer and speaker were intertwined to produce a masterful
> delivery.
>
> (Picture: River Kuludzulu at the highest slopes of Mt Michesi, where I
> always find peace)
>
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