My dad's first post as a principal was when he was sent to a rural school in a place called Inteke in the Mariannhill area west of Durban. One day he's sitting in his office, doing whatever it is that principals do in there, when some nine-year-olds come in. One of them has something stuck on her finger, cutting off all blood supply, and now the finger is grotesquely swollen and has taken on a blue-purplish hue.This being 1981, with cars a scarcity in rural South Africa, being a school principal also meant doubling up as an ambulance service. On the drive to St Mary's Hospital in Mariannhill, my dad starts quizzing the girl about how this Coke can latch ended up on her finger."You see, sir, I was fast asleep in bed last night when I saw a short man with a long beard standing over me," the girl says. "He then grabbed my hand, at which point I told him sternly, 'Mr Tokoloshe, leave me alone please,' but he wouldn't listen and then he took this thing and slid it down my finger by force."story_article_left1Now, now; no need to judge. Tokoloshes are very real, depending on where you're from. At least as real as vampires, dragons and unicorns, anyway. We can't be certain that she was lying. (Although the disgusting, rotten liar must now be in her early 40s and is probably a spin doctor for some MEC.)I was reminded of this story while watching the honourable minister of police, Nathi Nhleko, as he delivered his Nkandla report last week while sweating more profusely than Baleka Mbete would if she got lost and ended up in the middle of an Economic Freedom Fighters rally. I have never had a hand stuck up my rectum, but Nhleko wore the type of uncomfortable expression that I would wear if I was Chester Missing and Conrad Koch had his hand up my bum and was making me say stuff.I know that I'm in the minority when I say this in his defence: certain aspects of his report made sense to me.For instance, take the explanation about the fire pool being a core security feature. When my dad retired in the late '90s, the folks moved to his ancestral village in the Valley of a Thousand Hills where water is as abundant as goals in the PSL. When the missus, kids and I visit them, we have been known to use no more than 40 litres of water for bathing collectively - for an entire weekend. So I know all about rural water supply.If you're nodding and thinking, "plausible", I've got you right where I want you. And this is where I was disappointed with the minister. At this point, he should have gone for the jugular, but he didn't push the envelope far enough with his story. If you're going to try and sell bull dung to the people, you don't do it in half measures. You've got to go all the way.block_quotes_start If you're going to try and sell bull dung to the people, you don't do it in half measures. You've got to go all the way block_quotes_endTake that fire pool as a security feature story. I wouldn't have stopped at firefighting. I would have produced training records and certificates from the Professional Association of Diving Instructors for every member of the Zuma household and explained that, in the event of a raid by hostile ground forces, they had been trained to grab their scuba gear and plunge into the fire pool where they'd lie low at the bottom until the attackers got despondent and left. And then I'd show the bloody journalist hounds a video of a training drill involving the Nxamalala clan disappearing into the water one by one. Do you see where I'm going with this?The visitors' centre that Advocate Thuli Madonsela reckoned wasn't a security feature? I'd pluck out a story from the deep recesses of my colon about how, since the days of Jama kaNdaba (King Shaka's grandad), a royal homestead has always had a visitors' centre because outsiders could not be allowed access to the inner sanctum; the reason being that this would result in a clash of ancestors.I would produce a professor from the University of Zululand to back up my BS story with an anecdote about how, when King Dingane offed Piet Retief and company, it was inside the visitors' centre of the royal kraal at Umgungundlovu.story_article_right2I'd then mumble something inaudible about how President Robert Mugabe was getting increasingly belligerent and how maybe it was time to invite him to Nkandla and do a Piet Retief on him. Even Obamalite from Soweto would just sound silly trying to dispute such a watertight story.Ditto the chicken run. I'd knock that one out of the park by pounding the table while shrieking in a high-pitched voice, "Have none of you illiterate counter-revolutionaries watched Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, hmm? Birds can kill hundreds of attackers during a battle!"My point is that Nhleko has probably never read up on the Nazi minister of hoodwinking the people, Joseph Goebbels, who once quipped, "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it."This reminds me of the husband from Umlazi who is reputed to have burst into his house, out of breath and in his birthday suit, claiming to have been robbed of his clothes by muggers. His mother-in-law yawned and continued watching Generations. "And then these evil muggers smeared red lipstick on your face and forced a condom onto your member?"E-mail ngcobon@sundaytimes.co.za or find him on twitter @NdumisoNgcobo..