When we talk about elected officials who stutter, invariably these politicians stuttered in the past and found fluency to the point that most would not recognize that they ever stuttered. The most obvious example is President Joe Biden, but there are others like retired Congressman Frank Wolf and Ed Balls, former leader of the Labour Party in the UK. However, there is now a politician in Portugal who has defied all odds and still stutters badly. Joacine Katar Moreira has taken Portugal by storm and has risen above hurdles other than her stuttering. As an elected member of the Assembly of the Republic from 2019 to 2022, she did not let her fractured speech hold her back from speaking before the Assembly. It did not bother her that people had to wait until she was finished with her speaking.

Joacine Katar Moreira is not the typical member of the Portuguese Assembly of the Republic, to say the least. She was born in 1982 in the nation of Guinea-Bissau, which is one of the five former Portuguese colonies in Africa. The others are Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, and Sao Tome and Principe. She moved to Portugal with her family at the age of eight, and in 2003 became a naturalized Portuguese citizen. 

Katar Moreira did all of her education in Portugal. She received an undergraduate degree in Modern and Contemporary History, and later earned a master’s degree in development studies. Her Ph.D. is in African Studies. An outspoken activist during all of her academic years, she founded the Institute of Black Women in Portugal. She later made national history in 2019 by being the first black woman to head a party list in a Portuguese legislative election.

Speaking to the news agency EFA, Joacine Katar Moreira made a most memorable statement, saying that she has accepted that her stutter, “is very evident and that it is even quite spectacular, so it is absolutely impossible for someone to listen to me and pretend that I am not stuttering.”

Her campaign for the Parliament saw her speech disability as a major issue as many questioned her suitability for public office. Her reaction to this scenario was seen on national television–with in an interview with presenter and comedian Ricardo Araujo Pereira–and helped define her image. She said, “I stutter when I speak, not when I think. The danger in parliament is individuals who stutter when they think.”

A January 26, 2021, article in Face2Face Africa titled, “I Stutter When I Speak, Not When I Think – The Black Woman with Stutter Making a Difference in Portugal’s Parliament” addressed both her legislative initiatives and her struggles with stuttering. “Thus, Katar Moreira is now in Parliament as an independent deputy, but her public stance, showing how possible it is to live with stuttering, has earned her praise.”

There is no shortage of videos on YouTube of Joacine Katar Moreira speaking in various situations such as speaking before Parliament, television interviews, and regular speeches. It is obvious that her extremely noticeable stuttering does not give her cause to hold back. Her speaking in Parliament forces the other members to be patient and listen.

Joacine Katar Moreira ended her parliamentary term on March 29, 2022, but she continues her national political activism as a private citizen for the time being. She is an inspiration not only to women who stutter, but also to anyone who may think that their stuttering is going to hold them back in their profession. Joacine Katar Moreira’s rise to serve in Portugal’s Assembly of the Republic put her on the radar screen and there is no doubt will be hearing much more about her in coming years.

From the Fall 2022 Magazine