What is it with all this "willy-nilly"?

Why do South Africans, especially South African politicians, love the expression “willy-nilly” so? What exactly is its appeal?

Here’s a selection of quotes, acquired willy-nilly — pronounced weelie-neelie — online, though they don’t begin to reflect the popularity of the word (I’ve heard it often in interviews on 702 and the SABC, for example):

“We’re not going to expel our comrades willy-nilly,” ANC Mpumalanga secretary Lucky Ndinisa, speaking in the wake of a call by ANC Secretary-General Gwede Mantashe to root out Cope moles in ANC structures.

“It seems as though Israel is saying ‘we should just go in there and kill those people willy-nilly and there should be no independent reporting’.” ANC MP Albertinah Luthuli.

“Some offenders will never change, we’ll never willy-nilly let them go out.” Correctional Services Minister Ngconde Balfour. (Well, that’s a relief.)

“We cannot as a nation pretend that things are normal when the president of the country and the premiers are recalled willy-nilly by the ruling party, especially just a few months towards the end of their terms.” Deputy president of the African People’s Convention, Mofihli Likotsi.

“This is a broader problem we have had since 1994. It existed under Thabo Mbeki and surfaces under the new leadership, this belief that you can willy-nilly take cadres of the ANC and simply populate the state.” Professor Adam Habib.

Community members were not helping the fight against crime due to fear and in some cases financial benefit from the perpetrators which allowed them to commit criminal acts “willy-nilly”. Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula

“This does not mean that the OPP must willy-nilly retain a CEO who has been convicted of financial irregularities following a properly convened hearing where the OPP and the CEO were legally represented.” Public Protector Lawrence Mushwana.

“The ball didn’t always get to the wings. We could not throw the ball around willy-nilly and if that happened people would have said I was stupid not to stay conservative.” Springbok coach Peter de Villiers.

“We are not going to cut them off willy-nilly. However, when we feel the pain in South Africa, we all share the pain.” Jacob Maroga of Eskom.

The Zimbabweans also use the expression; Zimbabwean Local Government Deputy Minister Morris Sakabuya said the authorities would consider “even taking legal action against the profiteers to ensure that they did not hike prices willy-nilly.”

Perhaps the popularity of willy-nilly is a fad, as words like whereby, stakeholders, stakeholder engagement, grassroots level, counter-revolutionaries and barbaric* are also fads, to name but a few.

Interestingly, “willy-nilly” has a very long and distinguished history in the English language. It’s been around for at least 1 000 years; the first recorded version appeared in the Old English text Aelfric’s Lives of Saints circa 1000:
“Forean the we synd synfulle and sceolan beon eadmode, wille we, nelle we.”

I’m not entirely sure what that means. But it sounds almost like something one of our politicians would say.

* The sudden and relatively popularity of “barbaric” and its variations is something I’ll blog about once I’ve collated the examples I have to hand. It’s especially popular with Daily Sun readers, for some reason.