Editorial: Father Connections
Authors: Nduna Mzikazi , Khunou Grace 
Published: January 2015

South Africa celebrated twenty years of democracy in
2014 following more than 100 years of colonization and
institutionalized discrimination through Apartheid. A
‘broken’ family structure is one of the pathetic legacies left
by political instability in post-colonial and post war countries
globally. This phenomenon of broken families is evident in
South Africa following the period of discrimination against
Black people and the systematic migrant labor system that
was sponsored by and for the Apartheid government. The
migrant labor system separated fathers from their families
and men left their families in the rural communities to work
in the burgeoning mines and factories in urban areas. The
current democratic State has a responsibility to strengthen
broken families through policies and intervention informed
by research evidence. There is an emerging body of research
on Father Connections in post-war and post-colonial settings.

This special issue brings together eight articles on Father
Connections in South Africa. The articles present data from
diverse but interesting research; for example the piece by
Nduna M and Taulela M focuses on the experiences of
‘discovering’ biological fathers for youth who grew up with
absent and unknown fathers. The participants that the article
draws from are young women from a small town, in
Mpumalanga. Through narrative analysis, the article explores
how young people deal with finding out who their biological
fathers are. In the article by Selebano N and Khunou G, the
experiences of young fathers from Soweto are explored.

It is illustrated in this article that, there are strong ties
between young men’s experiences and the community
values, history and culture where they experience
fatherhood. The article by Langa M interestingly looks at
narratives and meaning makings of young boys who grew up
without fathers. Langa looks at how young boys can adopt
alternative ideas of what it means to be a man in contexts
that would otherwise be assumed to automatically lead to an
embrace of hegemonic notions of masculinities. On a similar
note the article by Nduna M focuses on experiences of young
people who grow up without a father entering into
endeavours to find and use their father’s surname. The
article looks at how the signifying paternal ancestry is
developed and maintained in contexts of father absence,
through pursuing an absent father’s surname as the ‘right
surname’.

The article by Lesch E and Ismail A focuses on the
significant question of the father daughter relationship and
examines constraining constructions of fatherhood for
daughters with a specific focus on the Cape Winelands
community in South Africa. In Chauke P and Khunou G‘s
contribution on the media’s influence on societal notions of
fatherhood in relation to the maintenance system is
examined. The article looks at how cases of maintenance are
dealt with in print media. Franklin A & Makiwane M’s
article provides a significant examination of male attitudes of
family and children. This article begins to speak to the
transformations of expectations of men in families. This
transformation is addressed through a look at racially
disaggregated quantitative data. Mthombeni A reviews a
book, Good Morning Mr. Mandela by Zelda Le Grange
where she examines some of the challenges of fatherhood in
South Africa’s past and present.