Hot seat for a man with pants on fire

ARETIRED mining company CEO once told me: “There is only one thing of which I can be absolutely certain about my time as CEO.” He paused for effect. “I was lied to every single day.”

In a world of “alternative facts”, we expect to be lied to. The very least the liars could do is be plausible. Frankly, the quality of lies we are subjected to is an insult to our collective intelligence.

The human propensity for bending the truth starts early. A 1999 study by psychologist Robert Feldman at the University of Massachusetts showed that the most popular kids were also the most effective liars, suggesting the habit is developed early on.

“Prisons are filled with bad liars,” writes psychologist Charles Ford in Lies! Lies! Lies!. The trick to being a good liar, argues Ford, is to do so as little as possible. Effective liars don’t bother using the device unless they really need to. And the really good ones prepare the groundwork for the lie immaculately. Half-truths are easier to conceal than blatant lies. The best liars are consistent with their presentation of the facts. Give different facts to different people, especially in the age of social media, and you are likely to be caught out.

South Africans have been captivated in recent weeks by the many versions of the story around Brian Molefe’s departure from and reappointment to Eskom.

Molefe stepped down from Eskom towards the end of last year “to clear his name” after being implicated in the former public protector’s State of Capture report for having an unhealthily intimate relationship with members of the Gupta family that may or may not have clouded his executive judgment.

He said he would clear his name and return to the public service unsullied by any vulgar suggestions of impropriety.

Before he had a chance to do so, he was being sworn in as an MP, ostensibly identified as a successor to Pravin Gordhan, who spent his 16-month second tenure as finance minister pulling knives out of his back. When Molefe was passed over for that job, he suddenly turned up at Eskom again. And that’s where it got awkward. His return was the best value-formoney solution, suggested Lynne Brown, the public enterprises minister. Why give him a R30-million pension pot when you could just pay him a salary to keep doing the job he’d previously quit?

But in terms of the group’s pension fund rules, he was not old enough to take early retirement. Besides, he’d barely been employed long enough to warrant such a big payment. Then it became a leave of absence in order to deflect attention from his new wife, or was it sick leave, or was it a sabbatical, a resignation or a retirement? It got very muddy very quickly.

Perhaps he never actually left, and his swearing-in as an MP was just a dream?

In a story that makes the fire-pool apologists look good, the only excuse not used so far seems to have been that Molefe was on maternity leave. If there is an upside, it’s the fact that they give a damn what you think.

Just as the president must rue the day he appointed Mogoeng Mogoeng chief justice in the misguided belief that he might go soft on breaches of the constitution, he must be wondering whether it would have been better to keep Gordhan distracted by the magnitude of the job of finance minister rather than free him up to ask embarrassing questions in parliamentary committees and embolden others to do the same.

A forensic investigator once told me his favourite trick to assess the integrity of a suspect was to make for their spouse’s underwear drawer during an early-morning raid of their home. It was not scientific by any stretch, but nine times out of 10 those he successfully prosecuted raised no objection to the intrusion.

The innocent were more likely to see the rifling through a partner’s underwear as an outrage. An honest person whose integrity is called into question will respond in a similar fashion. And we are not seeing much of that right now.

Telling the truth is always easier. Nowadays, though, who would believe you?

Whitfield is an award-winning financial journalist, broadcaster and speaker on the political economy