Public speaking is an art. Sometimes, in art, the beauty is in the simplicity. African speeches are given to exaggerations, elaborations and convoluted stories — the older the speaker, the greater the liberties the speaker is allowed.

In the words of many an African speaker, a simple structure becomes a “state-of-the-art”. Nearly everything new becomes “world-class”. The audience knows this is a lie; they all have seen better structures and new developments.

A road, like the one from Nairobi to Thika, becomes a “Superhighway” and so on. Odongo Omamo, in his posthumous book, Kaliech, captures this notion of making everything he engaged in to be of gargantuan standards.

Nowadays, nearly every county is “great” and inhabited by “great” people. No address will be complete without thanking the “great” people of the “great” county for their hospitality. Never mind that sometimes the “great” county has been led by corrupt officials who have looted the “great” county dry and subjected the “great” people to untold denials. The clapping that goes with the phrases “state of the art”, “great”, or “world-class” may very well know that these are exaggerations designed for the momentary delusion but will nevertheless allow for it, for Africanness demands no less.

But probably the most interesting “great” speech is the last of an occasion – the vote of thanks. Hardly is any meeting complete without this last speech. The tradition of the vote of thanks speech is drawn from seeking to show gratitude to the organisers of an event for their sacrifices in making the occasion a success.

If the vote of thanks is about a speech, then it should focus on the rare points or facts raised in the speech, which may have made the speech uncommon, a rare gem. Ours, however, often draw yawns.

It will start with thanking God as a standard expression, then the bishop for offering prayers, the speaker for having accepted the invitation, for giving the speech, the choirs for singing, the service providers for providing the tents, the furniture, the decorations, the food, the sound system, the audience for having come, for without them this occasion would not happen and so on. A vote of thanks speech would drag on for minutes, sometimes to the quarter of an hour mark.

The starting point is whether these speeches are ethical. If a speaker has been, for example, a person of the world, well exposed to the world standards, is it still ethical to refer to a rather average construction as a state-of-the-art or world-class when the subject of the description does not even rise to the national level standards?

How great is a county that can hardly feed itself, has a high child mortality rate, whose agriculture is failing and would hardly be a going concern were it not for largesse from other sections of society, including the national government?

Would a people without self-consciousness to demand better from their government deserve the term “great people”?

In the vote of thanks, some people featured in the speech have a transactional relationship with the organisers. They attend the function only to serve self-interest – business. At times, the tent service provider being thanked has workers impatiently waiting for the function to end to bring the tent down to move to the next assignment where the tent is immediately needed.

Creativity is critical in helping make every communicative performance a better experience for the public. A pit latrine could be world-class and state-of-the-art, but most of what our dignitaries come to commission are rather ordinary. Honesty would demand that they simply be referenced as such. When a function is done, save your audience time by simply letting them move on rather than spend another 15 minutes for a vote of thanks speech.

– The writer is Dean, School of Communication, Daystar University