Go and rescind no more

FROM time to time, new words emerge in the world of governmentspeak. This week everyone’s favourite was “rescind”.

First, Northern Cape premier Sylvia Lucas “rescinded” her decision to reshuffle her cabinet.

Then the interministerial committee looking at Brian Molefe’s reappointment as CEO of Eskom decided to “rescind” that decision.

This was after the board claimed it’d made a bit of a mistake in allowing him early retirement and had, in a bid to correct things, rescinded his early retirement.

So essentially they were rescinding their decision to rescind?

Hogarth suspects that all this rescinding is really a neatly packaged way to say: “We stuffed up and people are angry so we’re going back to the way things were before.”

Where do we apply to have the word “rescind” rescinded from our political vocabularies?