By JOACHIM BUWEMBO

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Ugandans have been savouring a couple of video clips from Kenya on social media, featuring freshly elected leaders taking the oath of office. And the comments of the Kenyan voters are equally interesting.

As the “people’s representatives” struggle with pronouncing keywords and talk of preserving the “constipation”, citizens opine that all the oaths should be administered in Swahili, which is a national language. But others point out that the Swahili spoken by some leaders is equally outrageous.

Yet others, in typical Kenyan enterprising spirit, propose ways to exploit the leaders’ gibberish by selling translation services at these solemn ceremonies.

Solemn? This banter over solemn ceremonies resonates well with Ugandans who, after their past two or three general elections, were treated to similar gibberish that left them with the impression that most freshly elected councillors were named ‘Solomon’, be they male or female. For as they held the Holy Bible or Koran in one hand, as the other rested on a copy of the national ‘constipation’, would severally struggle to say, “I, Solomon, swear…”.

The lack of ability by leaders to express themselves in their national and official languages is clear proof that social media is taking over, sweeping away important life skills that we have hitherto held as essential for personal and social development. For which leader needs to be able to read or write in this era of tik-tok? You can be 90 percent illiterate and record your short video as you deliver a punchy message, share it with your few agents who will then circulate widely to the public.

I don’t know how they do it but since they got mobile technology two decades ago, people who are 95 percent illiterate can make phone calls, retrieve contacts from the directory, send and receive mobile money and now there is the rage of voice note by WhatsApp.

And as modern warehousing takes root and spreads in serious African economies, illiterate peasant farmers are able to monitor and manage their agricultural produce from a simple analog phone which in Uganda we call kabiriti because its size equals to a matchbox. They can check the price changes, dispose of an amount of grain of their choice from the stock the specialised warehouse kept for them, and leave the rest for selling at the appropriate time, say, when the kids are returning to school.

So who needs reading skills anymore when a cheap phone in your palm can do all the communication for you! It’s not surprising that Ugandan MPs a week or so back passed a law that many people found unnecessary to deepen the punishment for using social media to annoy others.

Many people felt that there are enough laws to cater for such, but who said MPs read the content of the laws that they want to amend? Who needs to read documents these days anyway?

In fact, the MPs do not need to read themselves because the taxpayer pays research assistants for them. But who said those who do not want to read even want others to read for them?

As the Tenth Parliament was about to end — we are now under the Eleventh Parliament — the research assistants gathered the guts and sought a meeting with the former Speaker. Then they then vented out their frustration.

Most of them were female and they claimed that instead of being assigned to research, the male MPs prefer to conduct anatomical research on them instead.

So much for reading, which we grew up being told is important.

Joachim Buwembo is a Kampala-based journalist. E-mail: [email protected]