Being a social father

Long before we had the social discussion about father absence, South Africa had already built systems that made it normal. Men left home not because they didn’t care, but because they had to. 

We know about the uniforms and stationery, but one of the most important things we can help our kids prepare is their emotional toolkit. In South African classrooms and playgrounds, children learn more than the curriculum. They learn how to handle friendships, face challenges, and build skills like communication, empathy, resilience, and problem-solving. 

On a warm November morning, a classroom at Zonkizizwe Primary School in Orange Farm hosted a different kind of curriculum: fatherhood. No chalkboards, no formal lesson plan, just men arriving with their stories, their children, and the quiet hope of becoming better fathers than the ones they had, or didn’t have.

On 29 October 2025, Heartlines, in partnership with the University of the Witwatersrand School of Governance hosted the Rethinking Fatherhood, Gender, and Masculinity in South Africa symposium.

Fathers Matter encourages men to play an active and positive role in their children’s lives by developing skills around caregiving and emotional presence. The new law about parental leave is an opportunity for fathers to do exactly that from the very beginning, creating space for both parents to share the work and the joy of raising a newborn.

No two generations of fathers raise their children in quite the same way. Andile’s experience shows that the next chapter of fatherhood is written by choosing how to carry the good parts of the past forward while changing the parts that caused harm.