How Dotty is Scotty?

How Dotty is Scotty?

          I was on the veranda snoozing over my third brandy when I was rudely woken up by Kupela coming swinging round the corner and screeching ‘Brandy before lunch? What’s the doctor going to say about this?’

          ‘Aren’t you supposed to be at work?’ I asked.

          ‘I’ve given myself a couple of days off. I’ve just come back from Kalabo.’

          ‘What have you been doing there?’

          ‘A thousand things in only seven days!’ she laughed.

          ‘Congratulations,’ I said. ‘You must go and show Michael. He can’t do a single thing in ninety days.’

          ‘So what’s been happening here?’ she asked.

          ‘Much the same as usual. Dotty Scotty lying to parliament on a daily basis.’

          ‘What’s he said now?’

          ‘He said the tribunal to investigate the three judges is still on.’

          ‘Is that a lie?’ laughed Koops. ‘Maybe it’s the truth. I mean, he should know.’

          ‘You asked me what’s been going on,’ I sighed, ‘and I’m just trying to tell you. If you already know what’s going on better than I do, why are you asking me? Every time I open my mouth you contradict me!’

          ‘Oh poor Daddy,’ she said, giving me a little kiss. ‘We all love contradicting you because you’re so contradictory. And you do so believe in the truth! It’s all so delightfully nineteenth century!’

          ‘Look,’ I said, as I reached for the brandy glass, ‘Dotty Scotty said that the tribunal is on, when in fact the Supreme Court has suspended it! So what he said was a damn lie! Contempt of court! Contempt of parliament!’

          ‘Calm down Daddy,’ she laughed. ‘Did you take your pills this morning? Don’t you know that in politics there’s no such thing as truth, only different ways of looking at things!’

          ‘Don’t try to excuse the inexcusable old rogue. He lied. I know it and you know it.’

          ‘Knowledge is subjective,’ she persisted. ‘From his point of view, he may have been telling the truth. After all, maybe the government has just bought another couple of judges, and now has a majority in the Supreme Court. So he may know more about it than you do!’

          ‘He was lying,’ I said.

          ‘I hope you’re right,’ said Koops. ‘Because, if he’s telling the truth, then the situation is worse than you think.’

          ‘He’s always lying,’ I insisted. ‘He told the house that the Action Aid Report is nonsense, and the Zambia Sugar Company is not evading tax.’

          ‘I think he’s telling the truth,’ laughed Koops, ‘and the government has made an agreement with the company that they don’t pay tax.’

          ‘That would be worse!’ I shouted.

          ‘Perhaps so,’ Koops agreed. ‘But you forget that the point at issue is whether or not Dotty Scotty is telling the truth.’

          ‘I don’t believe him!’ I growled. ‘He’s completely dotty. He lives in a fictitious world constructed entirely by himself. He wouldn’t know the truth if it stared him in the face!’

          ‘Maybe he’s not as dotty as you imagine,’ suggested Koops. ‘Whenever he stands up to answer questions in parliament the opposition expect him to lie, just like they do. So when they ask a question they are ready with all the facts and figures that will expose his lie. They have all the quotations from his manifesto to show that the government has broken its promises. Then he answers the question by simply speaking the truth as he knows it. They are flabbergasted! They sit there with their jaws dropping! He has taken the wind out of their sails! They have nothing to say! The last thing they expected was the truth! He has completely out-maneuvered them!’

          ‘Sounds very clever. But do you have an actual example?’

          ‘There are lots of them. When asked about putting party cadres into civil service jobs, he didn’t deny it, he just said Yes, we didn’t like your cadres which you left behind. When asked when the government will clear the vendors from the street he calmly replies Since we have failed in our promise to help them, they will just have to stay where they are. When asked about bribing voters he merely says If they don’t vote for us they’ll get no development.

          ‘Such answers may be true,’ I said, ‘but they’re also very inadequate. The man is clearly dotty.’

          ‘Maybe not as dotty as you think,’ said Koops. ‘There may be method in his madness.’

          ‘Such as what?’ I sneered.

          ‘He is educating us to understand the arrogance of power. And he’s preparing us for the day when he will just stand there and tell the house that another thirty members of the opposition have been appointed deputy ministers, so the ruling party now has a two-thirds majority, and the new one-party constitution will be pushed through next week.’

          ‘That would be terrible!’ I gasped.

          ‘But the question,’ said Koops, ‘is whether it would be the truth.’

          ‘So you think Dotty Scotty is not dotty after all?’

          ‘Not at all,’ said Koops. ‘Unlike his wife Lotty Scotty, she’s gone completely dotty.’

          ‘Oh dear, what’s she done?’

          ‘She’s just been railing against the male sexist culture of uttering vicious and derogatory remarks against women, which she says is disgusting.’

          ‘What’s dotty about that?’ I asked. ‘Isn’t it the truth?’

          ‘It’s very true,’ said Koops. ‘And very dotty. She’s putting herself in a very dangerous position.’

          ‘How’s that?’ I wondered.

          ‘She spoke without the protection of parliamentary privilege. To speak the truth in public can be very dangerous.’

A Born Liar

A Born Liar

          ‘Nawiti,’ I said, ‘go and wash your hands.’

          ‘I’ve already washed them!’ she retorted.

          ‘No you haven’t,’ I said.

          ‘Look at them!’ I said, as I took hold of her hands and showed her the dirty palms. ‘How can you say you have washed them?’

          ‘Because I washed them yesterday,’ she retorted.

‘You go and wash them, then I’ll tell you a story.’

          ‘What about?’ she asked.

          ‘About a little boy who always told lies.’

          ‘Now where’s my story?’ she said, as she danced back from the bathroom, waving her little clean hands in the air. ‘And what was the name of the boy?’

          ‘His name was Wonama,’ I replied. ‘And nobody took him seriously because he could never tell the truth. Every time he opened his mouth he lied. He lied even when there was no known reason for doing so. For instance, he would tell the other boys that he was friendly with a lion in the forest, or …

          ‘Perhaps he really was friendly with a lion in the forest,’ suggested Nawiti.

          ‘And the next day he would say that his best friend was an elephant,’ I laughed

          ‘Did he have any friends?’ Nawiti wondered.

          ‘None,’ I said. ‘Not even an elephant. Nobody could trust him, nobody could believe him. Nobody could get to know him, because every day his story changed. Even him, he didn’t know himself, because he couldn’t face the truth about himself. It was like a terrible disease. He had an awful allergy to the truth.’

          ‘Did the disease go away as he got older?’

          ‘That was the problem,’ I said ‘Grownups can forgive a lie from a naughty little child, provided it doesn’t happen too often. But when an adult lies all the time it becomes a very big problem.’

          ‘What sort of problem?’

          ‘Well, for instance if a driver stopped and asked him which was the road to Kabwe, Wonama would immediately point in the direction of Kafue! He caused much confusion and wasted petrol.’

          ‘Perhaps he really thought he was pointing in the direction of Kabwe,’ suggested Nawiti.

          ‘No, that was the strange thing about Wonama. Speaking the truth made him feel ill, so he had to lie. Then he felt better.’

          ‘Did he do well at school?’ asked Nawiti.

          ‘Of course not,’ I laughed. ‘Even if he knew the answer to a question he would automatically say something else, so he failed all his exams.’

          ‘So now he was in a fix,’ said Nawiti. ‘If everybody was upset with his lies, wouldn’t it just have been easier to tell the truth?’

          ‘He knew that. But the truth would just stick in his throat. It couldn’t come out. But a lie was so tasty and satisfying and he enjoyed his lies so much. It was more like a medical condition. He was just a born liar.’

          ‘So I suppose he couldn’t get a job?’

          ‘Of course not. He would claim to be a carpenter when he wasn’t, so he’d be fired the next day. Plumber, welder, teacher, builder, singer, writer, no job lasted longer than a day.’

          ‘He was nothing,’ said Nawiti sadly. ‘He must have been very unhappy with himself.’

          ‘He was,’ I said. ‘Until one day he suddenly and unexpectedly discovered an advantage in lying. He told an ugly old woman that she looked young and beautiful, and she put her arm round him and gave him a kiss!’

          ‘She liked his lie!’

          ‘She even seemed to like him! The secret of being liked was simply to tell people the lies which they wanted to hear! Even if it was an outrageous lie, they would believe it!’

          ‘So he decided to become a politician!’ exclaimed Nawiti.

          ‘Exactly,’ I laughed. ‘Within a couple of years he had moved from being the most despised person in the land to being the most loved. He would go round saying The people gathered here are the most beautiful on Earth! and everybody would laugh and cheer and dance.

          ‘But perhaps they were the most beautiful on Earth,’ suggested Nawiti.

          ‘You’ve forgotten that Wonama was a liar,’ I said.

          ‘Oops,’ laughed Nawiti, ‘I almost believed him.’

          ‘Now in those days the people didn’t like the ruling Prince, so he would say things like The Prince is a thief, he sends thieves to steal money from your pockets while you are sleeping and the people would dance and cheer, singing The Prince is a thief! Off with his head!’

          ‘He had discovered the value of the nasty lie,’ said Nawiti.

          ‘And more than that,’ I said, ‘he soon discovered the value of promises. He would say Make me the Prince and I will put the money back in your pocket! and all the people would dance and sing Wonama for Prince! We shall all be rich!’

          ‘And did the people make Wonama their new Prince?’

          ‘Indeed they did,’ I said. ‘They carried him shoulder high to the palace, all singing Wonama in the palace, money in our pockets!’

          ‘And did he put the money in their pockets?’

          ‘No,’ I replied. ‘He didn’t.’

          ‘But why not,’ she complained irritably. ‘They all believed in him. And he was now the Prince. He had all the power to do it. Why didn’t he just keep his promise?’

          ‘He couldn’t,’ I explained, ‘because if he had done that, then the promise would have become the truth.  And Wonama couldn’t speak the truth. He was a born liar.’

          ‘Oops,’ said Nawiti, ‘I’d forgotten that bit!'