She was not appearing 'to play games', said Professor Thuli Madonsela, on Monday. The former Public Protector was addressing the Section 194 impeachment inquiry into her successor, Busisiwe Mkhwebane.
The long-anticipated and stop-start appearance of Madonsela as a witness, called by Mkhwebane, resulted in a metaphorical pummeling of note of Advocate Dali Mpofu and EFF leader Julius Malema, both physically and virtually, in Room M46.
Even after Madonsela had set out the rules of engagement with Mpofu early in the day, he hammered on for three hours, caught in a pointless circular argument about whether a statement or affidavit had to be initialed on each page or not.
"No court has accused me of not understanding the Constitution or being dishonest," Madonsela told Mpofu early, adding, "if you're asking me an irrelevant question, I will tell you sir."
Here is a collection of the most-used language during those three hours of the impeachment inquiry, chaired by Qubudile Dyantyi:
Madonsela word cloud: "What's the relevance?", "Can we deal with what we came for?", "Please don't talk over me", "Irrelevant Sir", "You have had a whole week", "Wasting taxpayers money", "You are speaking over me", "really low".
Malema word cloud: "Why are...