Explore five essential roles of manhood

HE WAS about to get married and was pondering how to be a better man when Dr Njabulo James Nkosi decided it was time to work on his latest book, Father of Man: The 5 Ideals to Build Better Men.

- WENDY JASSON DA COSTA

DR NJABULO James Nkosi has written his third book, Father of Man: The 5 Ideals to Build Better Men. | Supplied

The project took almost six years to complete, a period in which he went through many hardships.

“I wasn't writing from a place of, okay, Google, what does it take to be a man?

“I was tested in every single metric possible,” he says, citing personal losses, financial setbacks, and family challenges that reinforced the principles he was writing about.

Nkosi says that in a country scarred by gender-based violence and fractured families, he wanted to find the answers to the urgent conversation about how to create men of integrity, compassion, and accountability.

“You can be a male without being a man. Being a man is a choice, a choice to adopt responsibility and consciousness, every single day,’ he told Independent Media last week.

“The lesson that must stay with them is that we can all become better people to ourselves and to each other,” Nkosi says.

“More importantly, when we have better men, we inevitably have a better world, inevitably have a better society.

“And the realisation will hit - and must hit - that this journey is hard. It is gut-wrenching.