She is ... not my girlfriend

When I was 10 years old, I falsely claimed that Nokuzola Ngubane had "crowned" me, i.e., agreed to be my girlfriend. Before you counter-revolutionaries judge me too harshly, consider the context. It was a high-pressure situation.

The self-anointed leader of the posse I hung out with in Mpumalanga Township's Unit One North was a feisty fellow by the name of Phillip Zondi. He sternly warned us that any man in our wolf pack who did not have a girlfriend by the end of September 1982 would be ejected from his army. Not only that, this womanless weakling would be forever branded isitabane - a derogatory term for a homosexual man.

No one wanted to be isitabane, even though we didn't quite know what that was. All we knew is that this was a fate worse than the previously ultimate shame; being iphekulazikhuni, a terrorist. Besides, being ejected from the crew meant missing out on Phillip's colourful stories, his impressive expletive vocabulary and regular braaied pigeon meat. Phillip was and still is the most accurate operator with a slingshot I've ever encountered, so the pigeons didn't have a chance.

And he could spit further than anyone in the neighbourhood, which seemed quite important in 1982, for some reason I can't recall.

So, as the end-of-September deadline approached, I panicked like a member of the Younghusbands as the uNokhenke regiment scaled the eastern slope of Mount Isandlwana on that fateful January dawn.

Nokuzola Ngubane was a quiet girl who didn't socialise much on our street. Her folks locked the gates around 5pm - a perfect excuse for why I wouldn't be seen standing on the corner, chatting her up.

It seemed safe enough to claim she was my girl. With Phillip's chilling words ringing in my ears - "You are 10 years old; not children!" - I lied like a corporate lawyer and said Nokuzola was mine.

My position as a lieutenant within the ranks of the Phillippians secure, I went back to my peaceful existence of hunting rock rabbits and raiding the Hlongwanes' orchard. Or so I thought.

Wozanazo Primary, the school I attended, was at the nucleus of a "return-to-Zulu-traditionalism" tsunami sweeping through my neighbourhood in the early 1980s. A zealous proponent of this crusade against moral decay was a Ma'am Zondi, who had the face of a starved mule and a heart the temperature of Antarctica. One of her obsessions was that she abhorred any form of courtship in the school. So, once a year, she would institute a day-long witch-hunt to weed out any defaulters on the "thou shall not harbour affection for the opposite sex" commandment in the school code.

Ma'am Zondi's crusade depended heavily on information gleaned from snitches. The whistle-blower who fingered me as umkhwenyana [groom] to Nokuzola was Doris, a girl with the head and ears of a pit bull. The reason she ratted on me is because I'd circulated a cartoon the previous week depicting her as the heavyweight boxer, "Big" John Tate, on account of her butch frame.

The Courtship Tribunal was taking place in my Standard 4 class, so they had to go and get Nokuzola from her Standard3 class to verify Doris's story. And there, in front of my posse, Ma'am Zondi, the Chief Witch-Hunter, asked the question: "Is she your girlfriend?"

Hmm, conundrum. To continue with the lie, maintaining my street cred, but besmirching this innocent girl in the process? Or tell the truth and lose face?

Weeping like King David at the feet of the prophet Nathan in the Old Testament, I opted for the truth - that I'd made it all up. The admission didn't save me from a savage beating from The Mule, or the disgrace of facing my tribe after school. However, I took great comfort in the knowledge that I'd saved my imaginary girlfriend from any further trouble.

I was reminded of this disgraceful episode in the impressively long history of the fibs I've told in my life after the Public Prosecutor released her report on the many lies of our globe-trotting Minister Sicelo Shiceka.

It occurred to me that politicians always seem to struggle with a simple concept. As human beings, we all appreciate the fact that lying is a knee-jerk defence mechanism we all use to cover up wrong-doing or inadequacies.

But that only explains that initial lie. This is the lie I call the primary lie. The understandable lie. The unforgivable lie is the pre-meditated, deliberate lie used to cover up that primary lie - the secondary lie.

Politicians are particularly prone to the secondary lie, whether you're talking about Richard Nixon's Watergate lies, Bill Clinton getting all technical on whether fellatio constitutes sex, Tony Yengeni taking out full-page ads to deny getting a discount, or Judge Motata using the fact that both whisky and tea are amber-coloured to confuse us.

This is why I'm always quoting the impressive case of ANC spokesperson Jackson Mthembu who, upon realising that jig was up, raised his hands, put his head down in contrition and said: "Hey man, I was drunk." Two weeks later, we'd forgotten.

Back at the Ekurhuleni ranch, another comrade is facing jail for perpetuating secondary, tertiary and quaternary packs of lies.

My point? If your wife catches you in bed with another woman, it's best to avoid a story that begins: "Well, I slipped on a banana peel, fell on top of her ..." Just fess up.