[PICS] Playing Dad Cape Town film launch

As we think about our father stories, it can help to remember that fathers are people, just like us. And sometimes, connection grows from understanding how they give and receive love. 

See some of the winning entries from our Youth Month Competition. The competition was an opportunity for children to share their views about fatherhood. There were some powerful, inspiring and moving submissions. 

We are very sure about fatherlessness, and that's a problem. Themba Dlamini shares how one radio conversation exposed a national blind spot about faterhood in South Africa. 

In many communities, the dominant image of manhood remains physical – protect, provide, endure, fight. These instincts are not inherently wrong. But they are incomplete.

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. 

Father absence removes one of the first buffers against violence – a daily presence where anger is noticed, slowed down, named, and shaped before it hardens.