LIKE all organisations gripped by bureaucratic malaise, the African National Congress (ANC) is resorting to language that obfuscates, rather than elucidates.
Take the recent statement by the ruling party and its alliance partners on the mandate of the Reserve Bank: “The summit agreed that the alliance task team on macroeconomic policy must remain seized with reviewing and broadening the mandate of the Reserve Bank.”
“Must remain seized with” is a rather awkward phrase. It’s suggestive of action. After all, we speak of “seizing the moment”. To “seize”, according to the Collins English dictionary, means to take hold of quickly, to grab; to take possession of rapidly and forcibly; and to take by force or capture. It also means to grasp mentally, as in: “She immediately seized the idea.”
But its history in the corridors of the United Nations (UN), where the phrase is rooted, shows that it is often used by the multilateral body to camouflage its prevarication.
The phrase is used at the end of all resolutions by UN bodies. When used by the Security Council, for example, it is understood as a coded message to the General Assembly not to discuss an issue because the council is looking into it.
The source of this code is Article 12 of the UN charter which says that the assembly “shall not make any recommendations on any matter being considered by the council, except if asked by the council to do so.” The expression is sometimes modified to include the adverb “actively”, when a member of the Security Council wants to signal its keen interest in a particular issue.
The phrase has been around for more than 500 years, according to a 2002 article by US columnist William Safire. Safire, who died in September, wrote: “Seized of, similar to seized with, takes us into legalism dating to feudal times. In 1477, William wrote of the hero Jason that his reward would be to ‘be seased (seized) with the noble fliese (fleece) of gold’. The meaning was ‘to be in possession of ’. Four centuries later, in a Louisiana civil case, a judge had the same possessive meaning in mind when he found that ‘the ordinary jurisdiction being seized of the matter, could not be ousted ’. Among lawyers, ‘seized of’ and ‘seized with’ mean the same thing: ‘in control of ’.
“At the UN’s outset, diplomats eager to assert its global authority glommed on to the phrase. (‘Glom on to’ is from the Scottish glaum, ‘to snatch at’, and in America means ‘to seize, or manoeuvre to obtain’.) Quo Tai- chi, China’s representative in the Security Council in 1946, when the anti- Communists held that seat, told his fellow members, in English, ‘The council, in accordance with the draft resolution before us, remains seized of the matter.’
“That same year, Edward Stettinius, representing the US, sought to clarify the arcane usage. ‘I think our legal authorities fully understand the meaning of the word “seized”, but to avoid any possible misunderstanding in translation,’ he read his interpretation of the word: ‘matters which have been on the agenda of previous meetings and have not been finally disposed of by the Security Council ’.”
Over the years, the phrase has been used as cover for the UN to avoid making a decision, or a firm commitment to a particular course of action.
To illustrate the point, consider this proposed amendment by Malaysia’s UN delegation of a 2005 General Assembly resolution on Antarctica. “On operative paragraph 5, my delegation is proposing that the phrase ‘include in the provisional agenda of its sixty-third session the item entitled Question of Antarctica be replaced with the phrase ‘remain seized of the matter’.”
From the UN corridors, the phrase has found its way into the vocabulary of other multilateral institutions around the world. The ANC has been using it, too, beginning in the mid-1970s.
To remain “seized with the matter” is definitely “stilted English”, to borrow Slate’s phrase. It means what each member of the alliance wants it to mean. To the ANC, it might be a coded message to its alliance partners to shut up until the task team reports back to the alliance. Meanwhile, the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the Congress of South African Trade Unions can use the phrase to pacify their constituencies. I can imagine Blade Nzimande, the secretary- general of the SACP, reporting back to his constituency: “Comrades! We have scored a major victory. The alliance remains seized with reviewing and broadening the mandate of the Reserve Bank!”
You can’t possibly argue with that.
n Sikhakhane is editor-in-chief of Destiny Man and a freelance writer.