Children need good role models

The initiative was started by Jonathan Hoffenberg, programme manager of the centre. He has been working with communities to address these issues in partnership with parenting centres, clinics, and schools. The programme aims to break the cycle of broken families by supporting both children and fathers.

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The Parent Centre's outreach programme facilitated by Shuaib Salie offers a fatherhood programme that aims to rebuild and strengthen the relationship between fathers and their children.

While children in the Cape Flats are raised without a father or father figure, intervention programmes such as drilling and marching sessions have been offered by Sergeant Luqmaan Adams, social and community officer of Steenberg SAPS.

Mr Hoffenberg said South Africa's fatherhood crisis is unique in Africa.

Mr Hoffenberg said that, unlike many African countries where strong patriarchal family structures remain intact, South Africa is experiencing a serious breakdown in fatherhood.

He said that only a small number of children live with their biological fathers, with many instead growing up in single-parent households or under the care of a "social father" such as an uncle, grandfather, or another male figure.

He added that when the wrong male role model is present, it can have a lasting psychological impact on the family.

"We live in a country where men are often central to the crisis of gender-based violence, where children are growing up without their fathers, and where many men and women are struggling with the very idea of what a father should be. At the heart of this crisis is what we call the Father Wound," he said.

"The 'Father Wound' is a deep attachment trauma that can have a profound emotional impact. It reflects the negative or absent relationship we had or have with our father or father figure. It occurs not only when a child experiences their father as consistently critical, emotionally unavailable, neglectful, or abusive, it also exists when there is no father engagement at all."

Mr Hoffenberg said the State of South African Fathers 2024 report, which offered a data-driven look at how fatherhood in South Africa, highlighted that only about 35.6% of children live with their biological fathers.