Editor, thanks for the poets’ column. I'm still here, a young man, and no poet. I was born only yesterday across the Orange River. I look old with a beard, like Hili. Divorce? Whatever happened, my people? Why have things come to this? Listen.

There's a ring known as Mizpah in Hebrew. Translated, this means: “May God watch over the two of us, even when one is apart from the other.” If that happened, neither cattle nor marriage brokers would be wasted. Peace! The first woman to be given this ring was Rebecca, wife of Isaac; it was given to her by Abraham, her father-in-law. Abraham was the father of true believers. First he had prayed for that woman, Rebecca, asking Jehovah to show him a woman he could accept for his son, Isaac. And Jehovah did so. This became an established law among believers, that those whom God had joined together no one should put asunder: Peace!

That's not what happens with us, where a man sees a girl with money and says to her “Let's go and get married.” That's why things are as they are today. We roam the country, looking for niks; we carry satchels full of air; under our arms we have packets with half-jacks; we rent rooms in which we regularly fall pregnant and cut capers in New Clare. Our mothers are crying their porridge eyes out. They've been left by their children who've gone from their care and advice; they cry for those who can't hear them, their educated sons and daughters. There then is the voice speaking in thunder: those whom God has joined together, let no man put asunder. Are any ministers of religion present in the law courts, when these marriages are dissolved? Something joined by Jehovah's hand is just squashed into clay. There is absolutely no one on earth who can tear it apart; not even the angels would consider it unless they were sent to do so. Where then do we get the gall to lie to God in this way? And while we are busy with our lies, the cattle we used for lobola are lost in the divorce proceedings. All that money goes to the whites, and is not collected by God, who we are told is the only one who can dissolve marriages.