Exploring what it takes to grow up without a father

Johannesburg - In an age where sons and daughters are growing up fatherless, there is a strong need to change the narrative and, most importantly, do better. A book that propels fathers to be a part of their children’s lives in meaningful ways is Kabelo Chabalala’s A Journey From Boyhood To Manhood: A Masculinity Memoir.

The book is an honest reflection on Kabelo's life without his father, and how he navigated poverty as a young black villager in Limpopo. This is a world that seems to forget that South Africa has many faces and many voices crying out to be heard and listened to.

While the book is a memoir, it is also a collection of musings by a boy who found strength despite the absence of his father, and who grew up to become a man of courage, wisdom and truth. Chabalala does a good job at weaving nostalgia throughout the book by taking readers back to the era of wrestling shows such as WWE RAW and popular soapies such as Days of Our Lives and The Bold and The Beautiful.

One interesting aspect of the book is its call for fathers to take their places in South African black communities. Television shows such as Utatakho and No Excuse, Pay Papgeld are a reflection of how many children are going through their childhoods with no fathers or father figures in their lives. A Journey from Boyhood To Manhood pays careful attention to the boy child and how he navigates his way through a patriarchal world. While the young boy that Chabalala was grew up without a father, his book says: ‘I didn't turn out so badly and, if anything, I’m going to work towards fostering a constructive change to fatherlessness in my community.’

The book is written in 15 chapters and can be read in one sitting. It puts the focus on masculinity and challenges to masculinity. One of the ways he shows us this is when he mentions that at school he always hung out with his female classmates and how he always gravitated towards women because he grew up in a house full of women.

“The passing of my grandfather gave room for my mom, grandma, sister and aunts to be the faces of what it is to be a good human being,” he says.

What the reader will also appreciate about A Journey From Boyhood To Manhood is that Chabalala is that the chapters, although deeply personal, are concise and do not drag on for too long, making for a pleasant reading experience.

This is a book for everyone to read. It is important, it is eye-opening, and it gives permission to young children growing up without their fathers to have a voice and find purpose in who they are and what they are destined to be.

A Journey From Boyhood To Manhood: A Masculinity Memoir is published by Kabelo Chabalala. It is available for purchase from the author himself. For more information, readers can get in touch with him via e-mail at kableo03chabalala@gmail.com or visit his personal Facebook page.

Kabelo Chabalala is a former writer for The Citizen and The Star newspapers, and is a current columnist for The Sowetan. He is also the founder of the Young Man Movement, an organisation that focuses on reconstructing the socialisation of boys to create a new cohort of men in our society and across the globe. This is his first book.