Fathers without amandla? Gender and Fatherhood among isiZulu speakers

Abstract

Given the relative lack of literature on the subject of fathers in South Africa, what follows is tentative and exploratory.' Sketching out the changing context of fathering and fatherhood over the 20th century, the article gives specific attention to fathers in the current period of unemployment and diminishing marital rates. The basic argument is that a disjuncture exists today between many men's relative ease at fathering children (in a biological sense) and their inability to fulfill the roles of fatherhood (in a social sense). This fissure, it tries to show, provides an important entry point for understanding the contradictory contours of male power in past-apartheid South Africa.