POST – a spot-on manual for daily living

SOUTH Africa recently celebrated Marriage Week. But with the high divorce rate and a high number of husbands being instrumental in orchestrating their wives’ deaths, what is there to celebrate?

The sacred marriage covenant is being rocked in a turbid sea of moral rectitude. And when the moorings run adrift, no amount of ballast can bring about a calm. It is so sad when love and the promise of a bright future can so quickly fade from its former intensity.

While society can still boast many happy marriages and families, the statistics are telling. Statistics SA’s most recent figures showed a 8.1% decline in registered marriages from 2014 to 2015.

Although 138 267 legal marriages were registered, Stats SA said 25 260 completed divorce documents had been processed by December 2016 as opposed to 24 689 in 2014.

This is a clear indication that divorce is becoming more common as the popularity of marriage wanes.

They say happy marriages are made in heaven, but so, too, are thunder and lightning. Indians still suffer many challenges brought on by the nebulous notion of tradition.

In this day and age, old-fashioned, arranged marriages still take place. Immigrants still hunt down nubile, vulnerable and gullible women to take on as willing wives in order to gain citizenship.

Muslim marriages still operate according to the confines of sharia. Many business-minded people crave the security of marriage but not the intimacy of it.

But a new trend to cohabit prevails. Couples can also custom-make their marriage contracts. At one time, falling in love and marrying to seal a union was a primary thread in the tapestry of life, weaving a sense of centredness and completeness into people’s lives.

From a religious perspective, living together without marrying may constitute a sin. But all is not doom and gloom, and praise must be heaped on POST for a beefed-up Lifestyle section.

POST must also be congratulated for researching and reporting on daily issues that affect us all. Some interesting issues covered recently were those of death and grieving, widows, divorce, religious rituals and the recognition of Muslim marriages.

This medium is turning out to be a manual for facing the challenges of daily living.

KEVIN GOVENDER

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