I recently wrote a column giving everyone over the age of 65 a free pass to be as honest as they want to be, anywhere and at any time. While I was discussing the issue on Talk Radio 702 , someone called in to chastise me for the age limit. According to the caller, we're all entitled to bypass the filters between the brain and the mouth.While I am inclined to agree, the matter is complicated by the fact that the "civilised world" is headed in the opposite direction in a hurry, driven by the unstoppable tsunami called political correctness. By civilised world, I mean any place from Pofadder in the Northern Cape to the Bajuni Islands off the Somali coast to Barranquilla in Colombia to Paris, France, where men in tights brought the Enlightenment with a musket in one hand and the Word in the other.story_article_left1In this politically correct world we are encouraged to be as polite as we can. I predict that by 2050, the word "liar" will have disappeared from the English lexicon. People will either be "less than frank" or "prone to taking liberties with the truth". In our PC world, the word "honest" has morphed into the opposite of "polite" and a synonym of "rude". If I'm offered a dish with mushrooms and I happen to think mushrooms smell like a sailor's armpit, the polite thing to do is dig into the seaman's armpit or cite a non-existent allergy as a reason for declining.Tell me if this has happened to you. A "friend" asks for a R3,000 loan. You find yourself stumbling over your words trying to explain why you can't help. This is because such "friends" time their requests to coincide with you having told them excitedly about the Complete Floyd Mayweather Career Fights Collection DVD box set you just purchased. And then BOOM, they strike. You've clearly been set up like bowling pins to either cough up or appear to be a stingy rectal orifice if you say you don't have it.Why is it not sufficient to just say "No, I don't want to", and have that be the end of the story? Why must I provide a "polite" reason (read: BS reason)? And I'm not even advocating the no-holds-barred, unadulterated truth, which would go something like this: "You're a good-for-nothing bum who earns R50k a month but you piss it all away on a Range Rover Sport and guzzling Balvenie 21-year-old single malt every weekend. Frankly, if I gave you this loan, it would offend everything I consider decent. It would be a slap in the face of the needy in all of sub-Saharan Africa. It would be like donating shampoo to Ramaphosa's buffalo bull."block_quotes_start Telling someone to sod off requires five words in English. In Zulu it's simply: 'Angifuni' block_quotes_endAs truthful as this would be, it would just be mean. But why is "I do not want to" not acceptable? I would love to be able to implement the "I don't want to" policy in my language. This is because Zulu has one up on the English language when it comes to refusing a request. Telling someone to sod off requires five words in English: "I do not want to." In Zulu it's simply: "Angifuni." What a beautiful word. Try it and feel how it rolls off the tongue. Angifuni.There are many reasons I find politeness offensive, apart from the inherent untruthfulness of telling people "I need a bathroom break" when I mean I gotta pee. No bathing takes place during a "bathroom break" - well, except for the pebbles on the urinal.And why don't we have a Housing Ministry anymore, like we did when Joe Slovo was around? Did we call the ministry Human Settlements to distinguish it from some other ministry dealing with bovine settlements?And then there's the matter of the unintended consequences of the "politesisation" of society. Politeness is a weakness that the vultures otherwise known as call-centre agents bank on when they swoop down to harass hard-working, God-fearing, upstanding folks. Polite folks just can't bring themselves to do what a friend of mine does when an aggressive telemarketer insists on talking after the curt "not interested". He tells the caller to give him all the details before placing the phone on a table and walking away.And several decades ago already, the Jehovah's Witnesses discovered that politeness is the Rock of Gibraltar upon which a successful pamphlet distribution machinery is founded. Polite people feel compelled to stop and listen to the same story they've been hearing since they were barely crawling, because they don't want to appear rude.story_article_right2Even WhatsApp has entered the "exploit the polite" market to encourage more chatting on its network. How else to explain that "last seen" notification, blue ticks when texts are read and "online" status when you're reading messages. I reckon it's to encourage individuals to ask imbecilic questions, such as: "Are you ignoring me?" The last time someone asked me this question, I responded: "Yes, I am."From where I stand, I wasn't being rude, just honest. If I'd wanted to be rude, I would have shared the unadulterated truth, which is, "I'm chatting to someone I deem more important than you. Besides, I would rather have a WhatsApp chat with phytoplankton than subject myself to your inane jabber." Interestingly, the individual in question blocked me on Whatsapp and Twitter for my honesty, an act that caused me as much anguish as seeing a mosquito flying out of my bedroom window at 3am.We're starting to live in a world so PC we may as well remove the word "ugly" from the lexicon. After all, we're supposed to describe the coke-snorting, brassiere-wearing Lord John Sewel of the House of Lords as "not particularly aesthetically pleasing" even though he looks like something found inside a fur ball the cat coughed up.E-mail Ndumiso Ngcobo at ngcobon@sundaytimes.co.za or follow him on Twitter: @NdumisoNgcobo..