Where are you people getting your wedding rings?

From August until December, Namibia becomes one enormous wedding venue. Every weekend, someone gets married. If it is not a cousin in Oshakati, it is a colleague in Windhoek, somebody’s daughter in the village, or a neighbour in Rundu you last saw in Grade 12, who has since collected a degree, 14.3 extra kilos and a very firm opinion on what you should contribute to the wedding feast.

Wedding invitations arrive faster than salary increases.

WhatsApp groups are established within the hour, by someone who has appointed herself treasurer.

Auntie Hilma announces that a “small” contribution will be welcome. It is N$500. Dresses are ordered in a colour that exists only on the bride’s Pinterest board and suits nobody. Meanwhile, in kraals across the country, goats start scanning the horizon and quietly updating their wills.

By November, some people have attended so many weddings that they can sing the entrance song without knowing, or caring anymore, whose wedding they are attending. Uncle Hafeni has been seen softly singing it while standing in a bank queue, hoping to cash in on the last of his savings.

And the rings! Every bride has one. Some brides even have two, because one ring cannot carry the full weight of everlasting love. The groom makes do with a plain band. The sweat on his brow has nothing to do with the heatwave. It is the realisation that payments on his new wife’s bling will outlive the marriage, and possibly him. Diamonds are forever, remember. So is the instalment plan.

Which brings me to a question that has been keeping me awake since finance minister Ericah Shafudah presented her mid-year budget review: where, exactly, did the diamond money go?

Namibia’s diamond industry is heartbroken. It is sobbing into its hankie like the bride’s dad at the back of the hall, clutching a double Jameson, who has just realised he is paying for the open bar.

Diamond taxes and royalties brought government N$5.8 billion in 2023/24. This financial year, they are expected to bring in N$414 million. That is not a dip. That is a groom who went out for a smoke during the vows and was never seen again.

The situation is now so serious that government is providing royalty relief to an industry that once helped pay the country’s bills.

Love is blind, after all. It is just no longer dazzled blind by Namibian diamonds.

Are Namibians buying diamonds from somewhere else? Are we importing rings from Dubai, from South Africa, from a cousin of a cousin in China with an excellent Telegram marketing catalogue? Or are those beautiful stones not diamonds at all? Are we simply wearing glass with sassy confidence?

And please, before somebody sends me a lawyer’s letter, I am not accusing anybody of wearing fake jewellery. I would never. I am merely conducting an unofficial investigation into the relationship between our wedding season and the national economy.

Perhaps the answer is simple: many wedding rings contain no diamonds at all. Others may hold laboratory-grown stones, which offer the same sparkle without the same price.

There is nothing wrong with that. Love should not require a geological certificate at the altar.

But consider the irony. Namibia produces diamonds. We export them. Then we stand back and watch somebody else polish them, market them, and tuck them into a lovely velvety box with a bow on top.

And then we celebrate our marriages with rings that have never tasted Namibian soil. Not once. The soil is offended. It did all the work and did not even get a thank-you card.

We have become very good at celebrating the finished product while struggling to retain enough value from the raw material. Of course, a wedding ring is not going to rescue Namdeb or Debmarine. Global diamond demand is far bigger than Namibia’s wedding market, even in November, even with the goats.

Still, the question reveals something about our economy.

We produce valuable resources, but how much of their value stays here? How many Namibian jewellers, designers and manufacturers benefit when wedding season arrives?

Or are they like that distant relative sitting at home, armed with a cold Windhoek to ward off the bloody heatwave, a data bundle and a long memory, refreshing Facebook for the wedding photos and fuming that nobody invited them?

Our wedding industry can organise three ceremonies, four outfit changes and a convoy of 40 cars, all coordinated by a WhatsApp group with more members than the National Assembly. Surely it can also work out whether local businesses are getting a meaningful share of the spending.

So, as wedding season reaches its peak, I have a small request. When you admire that beautiful ring on Saturday, somewhere between the third speech and the second plate, ask where it came from. Politely. Preferably not during the vows.

Not because love needs an audit, but because Namibia’s diamonds might need a little love themselves.

And if the ring turns out to be fake, don’t panic. Sassy confidence has carried many a marriage.

Love is blind, after all. Just not due to the bright shine of Namibian diamonds anymore.