If it is any consolation to Tony Yengeni, he is not the first MP to be caught out lying to parliament.

The same sympathy must be extended to Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, who is not the the first MP to "correct" her earlier evidence, and inform a hearing under cross-examination that it might have been "an inaccuracy".

Going through old documents over the weekend I came upon the Erasmus commission report on the 1977/78 information department scandal. What a ball they had in those days.

Information minister Connie Mulder was of course found to have lied to parliament when asked whether the government had secretly founded and funded the Citizen newspaper.

He said it hadn't. Subsequently he claimed he had asked prime minister John Vorster what to say, and Vorster had sent him a note advising him to deny the truth. Vorster, in turn, denied he had sent Mulder such a note, though he had known about the Citizen - codenamed Project Annemarie - for a year without informing the rest of his cabinet. Under cross-examination by the commission, Mulder denied knowing all sorts of other "irregularities" in his department, on the basis that he did not become involved in "detail". Now there's a tip for some of our modern masters.

But he was also forced to "correct" his statement that R12 million in public funds had not been lent to Louis Luyt. Judge Erasmus noted: "Dr Mulder reluctantly veered, under pressure of cross-examination, from a total denial to an admission that it was in fact a loan." Such details do sometimes come to mind. Like Yengeni, both Mulder and Vorster left parliament in disgrace, but Winnie graces that institution with her presence so infrequently that her departure from it would hardly be noticed.

It's a pity we don't still have a Judge Erasmus presiding over commissions of inquiry. He was a man who loved metaphors, whether mixed or otherwise, and his colourful report was peppered with them. Just a few:

"Witnesses sang their own and their acquaintances' praises unasked - golden threads shone everywhere and the commission continually had to be on its guard against the tendency of witnesses to spin cocoons.

"Both Mr P W Botha and Senator Horwood (then minister of finance) find themselves in the pardonable position of a cyclist whom a bigger vehicle has bumped over the white line."

Johannes Waldeck (a senior official) "did not die a pupa in its cocoon and so, to change the metaphor, became a fly in the ointment to his chiefs ... he had to be ousted simply because he applied the brakes."

More flies in the ointment, that's what we need. You can't expect resident butterfly Patricia de Lille to be the only one who stings like a bee.

With acknowledgements to John Scott and Cape Times.