It goes from bad to worse for the man with a salary and a woman. Not only does having a bank balance carry with it the hazard of being waylaid by a cunning female happily out to relieve you of it, but marriage just isn’t what it used to be either.
All the fault of the dratted law, forever lurking around, seemingly in diabolical league with that calculating, money-hungry specimen, ‘the wifeâ€.
It started with innocuous sounding concepts such as ‘community of propertyâ€. A poor bloke didn’t even fully comprehend that he was bound by default to share the fruits of his labour until long after the ink had dried on the marriage register. In matters of amour, after all, such things seemed irrelevant.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, before you knew it, the law was invading the sanctity of your castle, lecturing you that you couldn’t feed her the occasional beating anymore — because she had ‘rightsâ€.
If things were bleak then, just wait until you’ve divorced. Long after you’ve rid yourself of the old ball and chain, she’ll still be able to cash in owing to her one-time association with you.
In the good old days, not only marriage but divorce was also cheaper. So what if somewhere along the line ‘things don’t work outâ€? So she gets to keep half the appliances and furniture, the children included. A guy wouldn’t even mind selling the house and splitting the proceeds — after all, there were always the golden years to look forward to.
The time when all those dreary hours of toil finally pay off, and a gentleman can enjoy his dotage in a nice condo, with a nice bit of pocket money — maybe even a nice newly divorced (and younger ) bokkie to pass the time alongside.
As for the ‘exâ€, she’ll have to wait until you decide to call it a day, by which time she’s been off the shelf so long there will be little time left to enjoy your hard-earned money. A bittersweet revenge, as it were, for the cheek of her claiming half your pension in the first place.
After all, the burden of earning wasn’t exactly equal. How, the reasoning goes, could decades spent underground in soot-faced drudgery on a gold mine be equal to ‘playing houseâ€, or being a cashier at Pick ‘n Pay? As for nursing and raising your children and ironing your uniform — they aren’t really work.
But alas, the geriatric utopia dream goes up in smoke.
As if embittered men haven’t been saying all along that having to share the financial fruits of their labour with undeserving ‘mere wives†or ex-wives was nothing but a load of crock, insult is added to injury.
And it goes by the name Cockcroft.
The law strikes again, this time in the form of an office known as the Pension Funds Adjudicator. Who ruled that an ex will no longer be forced to wait years, decades even, before being paid his or her legal share of a former spouse’s pension. This spells good news for exes on both sides of the financial divide. A welcome kitty for those who have children’s varsity fees to pay, and bonds to settle. And more Louis Vuitton bags and Botox injections for the already pampered.
Ms Cockcroft’s legal victory means good times are truly ‘acoming†for that old underdog, the ex-wife.
Of course, though, it is nowhere specified that ‘ex†automatically translates as woman — this, as feminists are at pains to point out, is nearly always the case, owing to glass ceilings, unpaid domestic servitude, et cetera.
And so the little woman triumphs, better late than never. And so the dream will have to be revised.
Wherein the good husband, still years or even decades away from pension age, will cast an envious eye out of the office window to see the newly flush ex whizzing by in a Ferrari, or sipping latté at a fashionable café at mid-morning, all the while beaming over the financial pages detailing a soar in the value of her shares.
The old cow may even rub your nose in it — flaunting how she used her payout to set up house with a young bok of her own.
Indeed, equality is hard on the male wallet. That green-gowned set-up on Braamfontein Hill, their accomplices in the lower courts, and a mixed bag of ‘boards†overseeing everything from your will to your pension, just seem to come up with more disingenuous ways to fleece and neuter the honest working man.
A bloke almost wishes he’d been born in a far-flung place like Saudi Arabia, rather than navigate the new South Africa and its accursed Constitution. At least in that desert kingdom they still adhere to the cherished values of days of yore when it comes to nuptial security — what’s yours was yours, and what’s hers was, well … nothing.