Orality and Authoritarianism: The performance of power in the speeches of Idi Amin of Uganda

This paper examines the intersection of orality and authoritarianism through a critical analysis of Idi Amin Dada’s speeches (1971–1979). It argues that Amin’s oratory, often dismissed in Western discourse as incoherent, was in fact a calculated performance of power deeply rooted in African oral aesthetics and epistemologies. Drawing on African orature theory (Finnegan, Okpewho), postcolonial performance studies (Barber, Mbembe), and decolonial communication frameworks (Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o), the study demonstrates how Amin’s use of proverbs, repetition, satire, allegory, and code-switching transformed speech into a culturally intelligible language of governance. Insights from Foucault’s discourse theory and Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic capital reveal speech as an instrument of control and legitimacy, while Tamale’s feminist moral critique situates Amin’s performative masculinity within patriarchal moral codes. Methodologically, the paper employs qualitative discourse and performance analysis of archival speeches, broadcasts, documentaries, and oral testimonies. The findings show that Amin’s rhetoric fused aesthetics, morality, and coercion—transforming violence into virtue and autocracy into a form of cultural familiarity. His self-mythologising titles and dramatic delivery positioned him simultaneously as griot, warrior, patriarch, and trickster, archetypes that resonated with Uganda’s oral imagination while legitimising domination. The study concludes that orality in postcolonial Africa operates as a double-edged cultural technology—both a vehicle for communal knowledge and an instrument of power. By situating Amin’s rhetoric within broader African and global performance theories, the paper reframes authoritarianism as an oral–digital continuum of spectacle, legitimacy, and memory.