NEWS & ANALYSIS

The 13 best sayings of Riah Phiyega (so far)

Gareth van Onselen says our new police chief has a unique way with words

The new South African police commissioner, Mangwashi Phiyega, has a unique way with words. Her language is infused with mangled metaphors, empty jargon, flowery clichés, African idioms as well as, well, just plain nonsense. It all makes for very entertaining reading.

Is she South Africa's answer to George W. Bush? The police's own Pieter de Villiers? Time will tell.

In the meanwhile, it all seems too good simply to let quietly slip into the ether and so I present to you: Phiyega's gallery of gobbledegook - a running archive of all her best sayings.

I will put a permanent link to it under the ‘Key Pieces' section of Inside Politics and keep it regularly updated; feel free to drop in every now and then and see what new piece of wisdom she has proffered.

If you'd like to contribute, if you've heard her say something you think qualifies (and which can be verified), send it through, I'll add it to the list.

Phiyega's gallery of gobbledegook:

1. "I've never been a police [officer], but I want to say that you don't need to be a drunkard to own a bottle store."

2. "If you don't hunt in a pack you can't even put down a limping bull."

3. "So, let me reiterate, once more, that corruption is a national priority, and so it is to us, as SAPS."

4. "...if you think government can do it on its own you are really swimming in a fools paradise..."

5. "What the Southern African Trust and the other stakeholders are doing is to create a platform and to plant a seed that advocates for that collaborative engagement."

6. "Now that I'm here, they will show me the real files and maybe when you talk to me 12 months down the line, I will be able to say I did see the real files and what we were seeing wasn't the real thing."

7. "No doctor can doctor herself."

8. "It's a process... it's a journey [that will] allow us to take some Red Bull [energy drink] so we can go on with the process."

9. "If you wear a copper bangle on your wrist, you can twist your hand how many times, you will never get the jingle, but if you put more of those copper bangles on your wrist, and you swivel, you will hear the best melody you can ever get." [Explaining an African idiom]

10.  "And what it means is that a woman, whose got a baby, or whether it's a Lion or an Elephant, got closer to its infant, its baby, that woman will take a knife and hold it on the sharp side." [Explaining an African idiom]

11. "I am reminded, at this juncture, of what Eleanor Roosevelt said, to say a woman is like a tea bag and when you hold a tea bag, you can't actually talk about the strength of the tea bag, until, you put that tea bag in boiling water, then you can see the strength of a tea bag... what the world is giving us today is actually providing us with hot water and indeed we would like to jump in, as tea bags, to just show how strong we are."

12. "My message to my fellow women and men in blue is that there is something before us and what I see, I see a piano. I will tell them that, colleagues, what we have before us is a piano. Its got various black and white keys. If we play it... if you play the piano, its got beautiful melody. It our diversity, in our difference, let us appreciate what we have - a piano - and lets get our customers, the citizens of this country, to play it and to get the melody that they appreciate, that suits their ears, that would be our concern. That's the message I have today."

13. "I am taking the potjiekos that you have made, I have put the carrots aside now, I'm going to the potato." [In refusing to answer the question, ‘Are you an ANC cadre?'] 

This article first appeared on Inside Politics.

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