Unfathered Father: UP Alumni writes about his journey as a fatherless child

Mothusi Mokalane

Unfathered Father is a book about a young man who was abandoned by his father when he was four years old and whose departure left him exposed to socioeconomic issues, an identity crisis, and an abusive mother. In the book, Tebogo Sithole takes us on a journey of abject poverty, rejection, and anger. Sithole explains that the reason he wrote a book about the effects of absentee fathers in the community was because of his personal experience but most importantly to raise awareness about this effect. Sithole goes on to boldly say that, as a society, we are very hypocritical because we know that the primary cause of all the challenges we have today are because of fathers who choose not to be present in their children’s lives.

Sithole explains that the main objective and message that he wants his readers to have after reading the book is for them to be aware that we have a crisis on our hands which he believes is the primary cause of most of the secondary challenges that he cites as pandemics (Gender Based Violence and crime) and for them to be conscientise in their approach to fathering their children.

Sithole further explains that “I raise a problem, which is the absence of fathers, state the consequences and provide possible outcomes of the society we would live in if all fathers fathered their children.” Sithole indicates that he wishes his book could make the presence of fathers and good parenting fashionable and believes that through men being there for their children, as a society, we will be able to do away with certain social ills.

Sithole touches on a subject of great concern in South Africa - GBV. According to him, most of the people who are perpetrators of these crimes, come from dysfunctional homes. “Talk about gender-based violence, serial killers and rapists, and crimes that are anger motivated, there is a clear correlation between those crimes and the absence of fathers, there is a clear correlation between poverty and absent fathers, there is a clear correlation between juvenile delinquency and absent fathers” said Sithole.

Sithole’s perspective is that we will not win the battle against crime and the violation of women and children until we deal with the issue of men having children and refusing to raise them.

He says “we are sort of wasting our time, wasting our resources in trying to deal with something that is not self-produced but it is rather a cause of something else”.

Sithole cautions against the belief that a father is only a father when he is economically present in a child’s life.

“A father contributes positively to the mental, spiritual and physical wellbeing of a child” said Sithole. He further adds that the presence of a father in a child’s life builds confidence and mental security.

Sithole explains the title of his book is selfexplanatory but is controversial because of the subtitle. He said that Unfathered Father is told from an angle of a boy who became a father at the age of 17, because of his father not being in his life. “Without fear of contradiction, I became a father because I didn’t have a father […] and I grew up in a dysfunctional home, being raised by a woman who was hurt too much, which made her dysfunctional too and she had to raise children whose fathers had left them” said Sitholee.

Sithole explains that his mother projected the “hate” she had for his father for leaving her onto him, and was therefore abused by his mother both physically and psychologically. Sithole explains that because of the financial burden that his mother faced after his father abandoned him, she was unable to be a gentle and kind mother - “that is why I make a bold claim in the book [...] there is a level of dysfunctionality in every child that grows up without a father”. Sithole indicates that because of the toxicity of his family, he ended up leaving home to live on the streets - “I grew up ‘mo tseleng’ (in the road), I was literally a street kid, and I moved from one house to the next”. Sithole also discusses the psychological damage he indured through most of his teenage years, whilst he stayed on the streets. He explains that he was resentful and filled with hatred, especially towards women - “I was angry at women […] I don’t have a father [...] but the one that’s here (the mother) I have certain expectations of that person, so when it is them that abuses me then she is the one I will resent more”. Sithole further explains that the way his mother treated him, for him in his teenage perspective, is how all women are, therefore he started developing ideas of how he could hurt them.

Unfathered Father is not only a story about struggles faced by a magnitude of black children who are unfathered, but also about what a wellfathered society would look like.

Sithole told PDBY that Unfathered Father is going to be a series of books that looks into the lives of different people who grew up without fathers and how their lives turned out. He is currently working on a sequel of this book, titled Unfathered Serial Rapist - the book will take a microscopic view into the life of a man that is currently incarcerated for being a rapist and how the absence of a father contributed to his life’s outcome. Other projects that he’s working on are a podcast and television show around this subject. Unfathered Father is currently available in the University of Pretoria Libraries, in Merensky Library.