God’s love, grace sustain marriage, help in parenting
I testify that I have received and continue to receive both. God’s love and grace give the gift of children, and we look to Him for wisdom to raise them.
Natasha and Edwin Karugire at an event.
NewVision Reporter
@NewVision
___________________ Natasha and Edwin Karugire
I recently heard a bishop at a wedding say marriage is the only institution where one receives the certificate before the exam/test. I found that interesting and true. The same can be said of life and parenting.
If there is so much of the unknown in entering a marriage and starting a family, how come people keep doing it? Could it be that it is because that is what the blueprint says? My blueprint for life and that of millions over centuries is the Bible. Genesis 1:27-28 says:
“So God created man in His image, in the image of God created He him, male and female created them. And God blessed them and God said unto them, be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.”
KJV Even people of other faiths follow this basic life principle, a man joined to a woman, usually within the confines of a covenant, with the natural product of that union being children.
As someone who is still in the classroom doing the exams, I am no expert in marriage, parenting, or life. I am a learner and a sojourner.
However, what I can share from my experience thus far revolves around grace. The grace of God.
When I was a young girl in the 1990s, there was a song I liked a lot called Built On Amazing Grace by a group called 4Him.
It talks about a family, which, despite life’s challenges, stays together, standing on the amazing grace of God. I still sing it to myself.
How else would two people from different backgrounds or families manage to live together for years and years, for the rest of their lives, if not for grace? I read somewhere many years ago that grace is when the Lord God gives us what we do not deserve, and mercy is when He withholds from us what we do deserve.
I testify that I have received and continue to receive both. God’s love and grace give the gift of children, and we look to Him for wisdom to raise them.
It is important to draw valuable lessons and ways from our heritage and traditions.
Our parents and elders are custodians of a wealth of wisdom and knowledge that we, as Africans, must strive to keep.
A simple example I can share is that during the years we lived in exile, in Sweden, because our mother, Maama Janet, was so busy making ends meet, that she did not think about certain traditional norms.
When Mzee, President Yoweri Museveni, found us in Sweden in 1985 for a short while, he made a big deal about us not greeting him properly when he would come home.
We would greet him with a small kajambo wave basically, even when he walked into the room.
He taught us to stand up to greet him, our mother, and anyone older than us. It seemed “extra” (as the youth say) and tedious, but it also made sense and felt right.
We have passed on such traditions to our young ones, along with numerous other ones.
So, why is grace important in establishing a family? Because marriage, parenting, and raising a family are too grand, great, and important an assignment to leave to the wind or to chance.
The Bible says in Hebrews 4:16: “Let us, therefore, come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”
In a time in the history of the world where the age-old set up of a family is being touted as a relic of a primitive past, where young and old alike are daily bombarded with an overload of information, so much of it opinion-based and so much of it laced with propaganda targeting the minds of the young; in a time where pornographic content is way too accessible on the internet and social media platforms and where perverted agendas backed by heavily funded foreign programmes are trying to get a stranglehold in our continent; as Ugandans and as Africans, let us camp at God’s throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find help for ourselves, our families, communities, and nations.
As we celebrate family this June, a month in which, in our beautiful country, we annually commemorate the courage of the Uganda Martyrs and heroes (June 3 and 9, respectively), it would be remiss of me to not remind myself and our readers that family and the concept of family is under attack and has been for some years now.
With the aggressive pushing of progressive (more accurately, regressive) ideologies of some Western countries on our traditional and religious values and the bombardment of social media information and misinformation on our societies, certain scriptures come to mind.
One is Revelation 12:11, which says: “And they overcame him (the devil) by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony”.
Natasha’s testimony
This is my testimony; “For I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that He can keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day.”
I commit myself, my family, and my nation to the grace of Almighty God and I trust that it is He who keeps us and will continue to keep us.
Instability in families threatens humanity by Edwin Karugire
While family is for many of us a matter of faith and tradition, it is also a critical matter for the survival of our species.
The original thinking espoused by demographers was that because natural resources are finite, there was a need for the state to control population growth.
In the 1960s and 1970s, dire predictions were made of an overpopulated planet replete with famine, shortages, and war.
Governments around the world, therefore, adopted several measures to restrict birth, ranging from free contraception in Europe to the one-child policy introduced in China in 1979.
Family formation and size were further constrained by other factors, such as higher education and professional careers, which often mean that women delay marriage and have children late in life, if at all when biology is not on one’s side.
Affluence and urbanisation also present an inverse relationship between income and fertility, where the more developed the nation, the fewer children are born.
Children are seen only as a financial burden, with couples choosing to keep pets instead.
A more recent factor, that must be mentioned (at the risk of being sanctioned), is the acceptance and promotion of permissive and deviant lifestyle choices that undermine the call to procreate.
Whatever the cause(s), countries have seen a downward population spiral as fewer children mean fewer future mothers, which means even fewer children and the vicious decline continues.
The rapid population decline in relatively peaceful and prosperous times is unprecedented.
Shrinking populations can drag countries into dire economic crises as businesses do not have people to hire, taxes soar, pension systems become unsustainable and healthcare unaffordable.
The societies become inverted worlds, with too many retirees and too few young people to support them. This is not just theory, because the signs of population decline are evident today.
By 2020, every country in Europe, except Iceland, had more 50-year-olds than newborns. In Japan, where adult diapers outsell baby diapers, twice as many people died than were born last year.
China, the world’s most populous country, abandoned the one-child policy in 2016, but it is still faced with a major decline in birth rates and a significant gender imbalance in the country, with males currently outnumbering females by more than 30 million.
Population will remain constant
This is an existential threat to these societies. According to demographers, for a population to merely replace itself without growing, the required fertility rate is 2.1 live births per woman.
At this rate, the population will not grow but will remain constant. More than half the countries in the world are below the population replacement rate and the overwhelming majority of these countries are the developed ones.
The UK has 1.6 births and the US at 1.7 births per woman. Countries like Italy and Germany, with 1.4 births per woman, will see their populations decline by about one-third per generation.
In Asia, China has registered a record low of 1.2 births, while in South Korea, there is even talk of national extinction as the fertility rate, already the world’s lowest, continued its dramatic decline to 0.72 births per woman.
South Korean women, concerned about career advancement and the financial cost of raising children, decided to delay childbirth or not have babies, some preferring to have pets. With North Korea doing better at 1.8 births, a case for reunification was never more compelling.
Sub-Saharan Africa baby boom
While the rest of the world faces the effects of a baby bust, sub-Saharan Africa is experiencing a baby boom, with the replacement fertility rate at an enviable 4.5 births per woman.
A recent study published in The Lancet found that sub-Saharan Africa will account for “one in every two children born on the planet by 2100”.
Praise the Lord! Naturally, the researchers at the University of Washington have fashioned this as a big problem, presenting a “staggering social change” and they were left pondering how “resource-limited countries in sub-Saharan Africa will … support the youngest, fastest growing population on the planet in some of the most politically and economically unstable, heat-stressed and health system-strained places on Earth.” No condescending platitude was left unused.
Africa is the most resource-abundant continent in the world, with no monopoly over the rest of the world on heat stress or political and economic challenges.
During the COVID pandemic, we all sat the same exam at the same time and we know which countries had the highest deaths per capita; the US and Italy are at the top, way above the health system-strained sub-Saharans.
We should, thus, be skeptical of all the generous funding being offered to alleviate this “population problem”.
How can we achieve the required birth rates and have a younger population to contribute to national and global progress? Iran is reported to have decided in 2020 that vasectomies can no longer be carried out at state-run medical centres and contraceptives will only be offered to women whose health might be at risk. No baby boom has resulted from this.
Throwing money at the problem will not do the trick either. South Korea, having reportedly spent $270b in areas, such as childcare subsidies since 2006, still has the lowest birth rate in the world.
Immigration is also a temporary solution as 75% of countries will not, at current trends, have fertility rates high enough to sustain population size by 2050, and, by 2100, this will be 97% of all countries.
Money, technology, and immigration will not reverse the grave predicament we face. The answer is and has always been promoting and protecting the family as the natural and basic unit of society and the only way for our species to survive.
There is no practical substitute for the formal family structure that we continually take for granted as the route to bringing forth and nurturing the next generation.
Therefore, as Genesis 1:27 commands, go forth, start families, and multiply like the potent sub-Saharan that you are. For those who do will dominate the earth.
Natasha, Edwin Karugire fact file
Natasha Museveni Karugire, lovingly identified by her father President Yoweri Museveni as Kukuru, is the second-born and the eldest daughter of the President and the First Lady, Mrs Janet Museveni.
Natasha, 48, was born in 1976 in Tanzania, where her parents were living as refugees and participating in the struggle against Idi Amin.
She has precisely fashioned her exclusive uniqueness as a writer, fashion designer, consultant, and film producer in different hats.
Natasha’s siblings include the older brother Muhoozi Kainerugaba, who is the Chief of Defence Forces, and sisters Patience, a born-again pastor, and Diana, a businesswoman.
Natasha’s educational journey navigates respected institutions, including Nyeri Complex in Kenya and the University of London, where she qualified in fashion and design.
She Juggles numerous roles with stylishness, listing into film direction, illustrated by her 2018 documentary, 27 Guns, recounting the 1981-1986 Bush War.
As an author, she corralled an autobiography, What’s in a Name; Kainembabazi, in 2011, providing a glance into her life as a president’s daughter.
This was on top of another piece of work titled Nzima and Njunju: A Story of Two Friends. Natasha has a deep affection for her father, which resonates with her active involvement in his re-election campaigns, particularly in the 2006 and 2021 general elections.
She is married to Edwin Karugire, an affluent Ugandan businessman and lawyer. Their wedding in 2000 was graced by remarkable personalities from political, religious, cultural, business, and celebrity realms.
Edwin has over 20 years of experience in both international and domestic corporate and commercial practice.
He has acted for clients across aspects of corporate law, not limited to mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures, banking, and finance.
Others are technology, media and telecommunication, private equity, energy, taxation, public-private partnerships and insolvency.
This is on top of successfully structuring, negotiating, and executing some of the most complex commercial transactions in the industry.
In 2016, under their K&K Advocates, Karugire, alongside current Attorney General Kiryowa Kiwanuka, effectively defended Museveni’s Presidential election petition filed by Amama Mbabazi before the Supreme Court.
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