For almost 10 years, all we had was words. Some, like "A better life for all", "100% for Zuma" and "fire-pool" were obvious, ludicrous lies. Others - "smallanyana skeletons", "Shaun the Sheep", "Saxonwold shebeen" - were sinister jokes. By the end, many, like "Marikana", "state capture" and "Life Esidimeni", were shocking facts.
There were gentler words, also, that we would share with each other in the first months; words like "hope" and "change" and "possibility". But as the lies and jokes and facts piled up higher and higher, we hid those fragile words away so that we would not have to see them corroded and irreparably broken.
Sometimes, even the few words we held on to failed us, like when Jacob Zuma's first enabler-in-chief, Julius Malema, told us that Khwezi had enjoyed her night with the president, or when Zuma stole our money to pay for his house, or when he appointed Des van Rooyen to run the economy, or when he laughed at us from the podium in parliament.
But words were all we had, so we kept using them, on him, at him, with each other. And over the years our breath condensed into a deep, damp fog of speculation and anxiety, slowly filling the great void left by our absent leaders who were away playing their venal games at our expense.And still we talked (and wrote, and read, and broadcast). We talked to make sense of things. We talked to rid ourselves of anger and fear. We talked to cheer each other up.
We talked so much that talk started feeling like action. When Zuma or his toadies said something that wasn't clearly a lie, it felt like good governance. When the EFF yelled, it felt like constructive opposition.
That fog lasted until the very end. On Wednesday we saw an old man completely lost in a mist of his own making. We saw a man who had not been told (or at least hadn't heard) the word "no" in decades, and, hearing no other voices he recognised, had decided that he was alone, and had begun to act accordingly.
His rambling, self-pitying monologue earlier in the day was especially startling.
Politicians are masters at hiding their psychological defects, usually by telling us that those defects are assets: populists are "sons or daughters of the soil"; illiterates "tell it like it is"; corrupt enablers are "loyal comrades". But on Wednesday afternoon all those deceptions fell away as the words finally lost their very last spark of meaning.
The tone of his voice, warmly confiding as always, suggested that he thought he was making a point; but the words themselves were babble, a jumble of placeholders that offered nothing except a clear view of Zuma's state of mind. Instead of a politician, we saw simply an old man who, nudged ever further by vanity and greed, had drifted far beyond any shared South African reality and was realising, too late, that he didn't know where he was and could no longer get back to safety.Because words are all we've had for so long, it seems sensible to keep relying on them. But that would be a mistake. The time for words is over. We've heard millions of them, and all they gave us was Jacob Zuma.
If we are going to capitalise on this astonishing respite we've been given, we need to wean ourselves off the rhetoric of politicians and the sometimes masturbatory punditry we threw back at them to defend ourselves, and learn an entirely new language.
It is time for us to become fluent in the language of action; of delivery.
From now onwards, we must demand action. We must expect it. And when, inevitably, we are offered words instead of action, we must brush them aside for the worthless distractions they are.
Once we expect action, and demand that causes have effects and that choices have consequences, then it all becomes relatively simple. The need for words diminishes. Because then it's all about delivery.
If Cyril Ramaphosa's government begins to deliver - on promises made to the poor; on the potential of our young people; on our collective longing to make this country better - then it is a government that can be supported. If it doesn't, then it must be broken at the polls.Before we put aside words entirely, though, let's find some of the best ones for the people who took Zuma's foot off the throat of this country.
"Heroes" might be a good one to start with. "Brave", too, and "steadfast" seem appropriate to describe the thin line that stood between us and a red-fanged kleptocracy: our relentless corps of investigative journalists; our NGOs and their vastly patient lawyers, protecting our collective humanity; and, less visible, our public servants who fought endless rearguard actions against creeping abuse and who held the line in a thousand skirmishes we'll never know about.
We owe them everything, but, for now, words will have to do. So, with the deepest respect and gratitude, we say: thank you.
And now, action. President Ramaphosa, show us what you've got.
Eaton is a columnist for Times Select. This is an edited version of an online column this week..