MY WEEK IN 800 WORDS

Sanibonani everybody, I hope your Easter break is going well. So, several things have been going through my mind over the last few weeks and I’d like to break it down for you and hopefully hear your own thoughts on these issues.

Tax me no more!
Wow! I was in Ghana when the story broke about the incredible tax increases in the kingdom and I very quickly realised what I had suspected for about nine years...I don’t, in fact, have enough money to be an adult in this and any economy. What is happening?
I ask with tears streaming down my face, tears which I will wipe off with the back of my sleeve because I cannot afford tissues as it turns out.

On one hand I want to travel and see the world, and on the other hand I can’t afford the new passport costs so what’s really the truth anywhere.

Kulobo bumnyama I read about how non-Swazis applying for citizenship through marriage will have to pay E30 000 for that. WHAT DO YOU MEAN?
My Rwandese partner and I haven’t even discussed that because the government is full of haters.
I don’t even want to speak about the Graded Tax pole vaulting from E18 a year to E1 200 (or thereabout). No. At some point this country will have to give me a break because I am tired of being the backbone of this government! When the story broke I was in Accra speaking like a disgruntled breadwinner ‘impela lamacandza sekaba starch senu’.

I beg for mercy because I really do want to cash out of being an adult – I’m not keeping up. Send a sheriff to repossess all this adulting and leave me out of it.
Secret weddings and ring marks

This week Twitter was abuzz with stories of romantic partners who hide marriages from their other partners.
It all started with a young woman tweeting about how she had been with her boyfriend for seven years and they had started a business together, had a child and she found out this week that he has been married the entire time.

What kind of sociopath hides a marriage for seven years? What kind of sociopath hides a seven year relationship for seven years?
What is manhood about really? Two interesting responses about this were; “if a man hides a marriage from you for seven years then he really wants to be with you” – first of all, no.

That man hates accountability and enjoys the clandestine way in which he can have his cake and eat it too.
We have cultures where polygamy is widely practiced and is accepted but men don’t want to legitimise the women’s position because she likely would leave if he offered her second wife status or it would change the dynamic of their relationship.

This really sounds like an overwhelming problem men have of being skelems for fun. Keep it away from me.
The other response was someone rightly observing that when a child is conceived out of wedlock the two families meet to discuss damages et al but that’s neither here nor there because families will go to the ends of the earth to cover up and protect the shenanigans of their sons.

It’s disgusting and to reaffirm my previous position – keep it away from me.
Dignity shmignity
I find that I really do struggle to interact with men – largely because I don’t understand how anyone can go through life that entitled to every single thing.

This UNISWA student Mancoba Hlophe, who was convicted to eight months imprisonment for injuring the dignity of another UNISWA student who he had unsuccessfully propositioned.

He created a fake Facebook profile where he posted nude photographs of the young woman in question and also put up posters of her all over the Kwaluseni campus with captions that implied she was a sex worker.

He did all this to be charged and convicted of crimen injuria and then criticised the sentencing by saying it is grossly excessive.
Men really don’t understand consequences or what? It reminded me of something I read a few years ago about how women were getting raped on a campus in the US, to which the authorities responded by telling women students not to go out alone after dark, or at all.

Someone jokingly put up a poster suggesting that men be excluded from campus after dark and men were shocked at being asked to disappear, to lose their freedom to move and participate freely all because of the violence of one man.
That is when I realised that men cannot fathom consequences. Disappointing but not surprising.

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