According to research done by the South African Institute of Race Relations the number of children without fathers in South African is increasing yearly, with a majority of these children being Black. What the South African Institute of Race Relations did was just put figures to it. This has always been a part of, if not what has come to define the lives of many Black children. As part of the statistics myself, with this piece I will attempt to unpack some of the reasons which don’t make most of our conversations about why we have absent fathers. Firstly let’s get this out of the way, an absent father is not one who is not there physically but also emotionally as well.
The exagerration of a Black man’s strength! We have placed so much pressure on the black man to be super strict, super strong and basically a walking super human that he does not know how to father someone but to constantly use what society thinks of him as a guideline on how to raise his children. Included in the guideline being things like, “she is a girl child, what opinion could she possibly have? She must just obey what you say”.. “He is a boy. You need to toughen him up”.. We have created barriers between fathers and children because of gender roles.
To the “discomfort” of the spaces we find ourselves in we must be able to admit that the white man is also responsible for our fathers not being at home. If he is not slaving away on some farm watering baas’s crops with his sweat, he is digging gold for him or he is being ordered around by klein baas who is the same age as you the whole day. To maximise profits ubaas needs him to leave home at dawn and come back at night, now when does he get the time to hear about that Accounting distinction you got at school? To be present and be a father?
With that said, may ours be the last generation of Black children to grow up without fathers!!