Since the dawn of democracy, new phrases have started to emerge but trying to juxtapose those phrases with whatever they are meant for is so difficult to fathom.

Phrases like "touching base with the poor of the poorest " and "all hands on deck" for newly appointed officers have emerged.

We no longer talk of problems but "challenges". We talk about "step aside" rule for those found with fingers in the cookie jars, but do they ever step aside?

Now there is this one which I am calling upon politically connected medical scientists to explain to us so that we could understand it very well – "terminally ill". There was one Shabir Shaick who was paroled as he was "terminally ill" and soon he could shame Tiger Woods at the golf course. Is it possible for a terminally ill person to do that ?

Now our honourable former president Jacob Zuma was recently paroled by former chief of intelligence Arthur Fraser as he was alleged to be terminally ill, and now the terminally ill Zuma, whom we thought was being nursed at his home at Nkandla, is traversing  KwaZulu-Natal crooning that his former wife be elected president of the ANC and he himself be elected chairperson of the party.

Where does the terminally ill person get all this energy?  I am calling upon those who coin all this new democratic phrases to explain what they actually mean. Doesn't it make one think?

Makgato Raletsatsi, Tzaneen