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Khuphuka Nasingeni .
We are all familiar with the cash crunch in this country and how everyone looks forward to the opening of the tobacco auction floors since foreign currency flows in steadily as foreign buyers cart away our smoke!A� This trade falls under the import and export categories, as my Commerce teacher would put it, trying to stress a point and sound very enlightened at the same time.
It was mainly goods and services in those good old days (you will forgive me teacher if I am mixing up your concepts, could be that is how it sounded). Lately, however, trade has variegated perilously into areas quite remote from the traditional trade that our forefathers dabbled in.
Just this past week, word reaching yours trulya��s ears and generously reported was that having graduated from spinsterhood and bachelorhood in September last year, a couple was now working on dissolving the union. The woman is based in the United Kingdom and the husband is domiciled in this very land whose independence from the former we are marking next week! Makes one wonder if the union was ever consummated.
Back to my import and export terms, we tried to visualise what a bill of lading was, Cost Insurance Freight (CIF) . . . forget that headache, just present your passport to port of entry and exit and tell immigration
a�?I wanna go home woo, to get a husband woo.a�?A� I know a couple of guys whose white weddings are still the talk of town but that are yet to taste the white sheets of their matrimonial beds in some country where they were meant to fly off to after the wedding.A� But you dare not ask why they are a�?unjoininga�? what the Lord has put together! Celebrity couples talk of pre-nuptial contracts, and with the way migration has infused migraines into our relationships, we should be seriously considering such arrangements.
An automatic clause like, if the man/woman does not join the other partner within a prescribed period, then the union should be deemed void without the necessity of a court hearing. Courts have serious backlogs that our legislature could remedy through promulgating such flexible legislation. I also have had a chance to interact with some of my sisters that went beyond seas nearby to yonder lands where they found love.
These ones have their own set of challenges. The first challenge I witnessed with these foreign boys overseas is that ita��s either they feign ignorance or they totally do not understand lobola/roora.A� Now, that is a big problem that should be viewed in investment terms, Foreign Indirect Investment in my daughter in whom I invested until she landed beyond the seas.
Our daughters should make it clear to these boys that it is lobola or no deal. And while at it, the sisters should tell these guys to man up. A couple of sisters complained that their guys preferred living off them though I felt they went for such guys out of an attempt to resolve immigration issues emotionally.A� Dear reader, the long and short of this wobbly waffle is that we need to find a new definition of marriage, new parameters for this institution that embrace distance and freeze time.
I shall not talk about frozen marriages that only subsist in certificates that are filed in some dusty cabinets somewhere while the signatories are as far apart as the Atlantic from the Indian Ocean. However, this is not to say that people should marry as close an associate as falling for a better resourced workmate, after initially falling head over heels for the one fit for the wedding!
Maybe firms could offer wedding packages for staff that marry from within so that the married guys do not start switching once they stumble on some single other . . . The pursuit of a happy, fulfilling adult life and also procreating within accepted institutional standards has landed many in grief as what at times marriage promises could turn out to be elusive.
We believe, with my friend Mzo, this is enough to bolster our agitation for a specific ministry that can be solely seized with the matter and come up with a national programme of action of this institution under siege from the vagaries of trade, distance, technology and cultural imperialism!
The United Arab Emirates is not leaving anything to chance.A� Even though the country is the 20th happiest country in the world, according to the latest United Nations World Happiness Report, the State appointed a Minister of Happiness, Ohood Al Roumi. We definitely are not that happy judging from our marriages, some of which cannot even clear a 200-day hurdle. I suggest that I lead a team to UAE to explore the benefits of such a ministry after which we can set up a task force to visit other countries that have had such portfolios, and Venezuela comes to mind . . .
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