[civsoc-mw] Fwd: Ken Lipenga writings

[Limbani Nsapato]

Hahaha. People don't want to be told the truth in a direct way!!
Sugarcoat the criticism using literary language..

On 7/7/20, Cedrick Ngalande <cedrick.goliati.ngalande at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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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>>
>


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