Language gymnastics takes that explanation just a stretch too far

Minister Senzo Mchunu's attempt to reinterpret the plain meaning of the word 'immediately' betrayed a blatant and dangerous disregard for language discipline

- Bhekisisa Mncube

Ah, Chief Dwasaho! I am a decorated freedom fighter. I have fought against the misuse of verbs, the butchering of adjectives and the merciless assault on commas. My battlefield was the blank page; my weapon, the pen.

I stood firm when split infinitives marched across our sentences, when dangling modifiers threatened the very dignity of meaning.

Today, if need be, I am prepared to die for the nouns to see them stand tall, proud and properly capitalised in formal British English sentences, unperturbed by a missing comma. The precision of our language is not a trivial matter, but a cornerstone of our society's integrity.

We have allowed grammatical anarchy to run amok for too long, letting apostrophes wander where they please and punctuation marks desert their posts. But not under my watch. I am the keeper of the King's English, a soldier of syntax sworn to defend the beauty of language from the tyranny of sloppiness. Writing carelessly disrespects thought itself, so I march undaunted, ink-stained and gloriously pedantic.

The misuse of language is not just a political tool, but a personal affront to our dignity.

Gun for pen

But fear not, do not cry for me, South Africa, for I am a soldier of conscience.

My struggle for grammatically free sentences knows no bounds. I fight not for glory but for clarity, not for applause but for the sanctity of expression.

Each properly placed comma, each unbutchered adjective is an act of rebellion against the ghosts of linguistic colonialism. I have long traded the gun for the pen, the street protest for the paragraph.

And while the world debates semantics, I will be in the trenches polishing verbs, freeing nouns and defending the English language with a Zulu heart and revolutionary resolve.