Tag: Men in South Africa

Hoba Monna (being a man) and the Quiet Weight Men Carry

Hoba Monna by Sannere featuring Selimo Thabang, Omali Themba, Flash Cortez, Wave Rhyder, Marcx Brass) 

I hesitated before writing and publishing this piece during the 16 Days of Activism for No Violence Against Women and Children, a period rightly dedicated to confronting gender based violence and the harm it causes. I am conscious that speaking about men’s struggles at this time can easily be misread as deflection, minimisation, or even quiet support for violence, as if acknowledging the weight men carry somehow denies the suffering of women. That fear of misinterpretation is real, and it says something important about the moment we are in. Yet silence is not neutrality. Avoiding honest reflection because it may be misunderstood only narrows the conversation further. This article is not an attempt to excuse harm or shift blame. It is an attempt to understand the human conditions under which many men are living, because without that understanding, the very violence we seek to end will continue to reproduce itself in quieter, less visible ways.

Sometimes a song does what public debates, campaigns, and opinion pieces struggle to do. It names a feeling without dressing it up. Hoba Monna does exactly that. It speaks plainly about what it feels like to be a man carrying responsibility in silence, and in doing so, it exposes a reality many men live but rarely articulate.

The title itself is revealing. Hoba monna means “to be a man”. Not to perform masculinity. Not to dominate. Simply to exist as a man. Yet from the opening hook, the song makes it clear that this existence has become exhausting.

“Ke fihletse boemong ba ho tsofala hoba monna, ke fihletse boemong ba ho utloa hore ho thata hoba monna.”

This is not exaggeration. It is accumulation. The repetition signals long term emotional fatigue, the slow wearing down that comes from expectation layered on top of expectation. Being a man, in this telling, is not dramatic. It is heavy.

Strength Without Space to Falter

In the first verse, the artist captures a contradiction many men experience early in life.

“People keep judging me, when I go weak, they forget I’m human and I also breathe.”

Men are permitted strength, but not struggle. The moment vulnerability appears, humanity is withdrawn. Weakness is treated as failure rather than as a normal part of being human.

Yet responsibility remains non negotiable.

“I gotta confide, I gotta provide in the process so my family can eat.”

There is no rejection of duty here. The pain comes from being expected to provide and endure without acknowledgement of cost. Men are required to function regardless of their internal state. When they do not, judgment follows swiftly. Pressure becomes personal rather than contextual. The man is blamed, while the conditions surrounding him remain invisible.

Becoming a Man Without Guidance

One of the quietest lines in the song is also one of the most revealing.

“And I wish my father could’ve shown me a hint.”

This is not accusation. It is absence speaking. It reflects the experience of many men who are expected to know how to be responsible, disciplined, and emotionally regulated without ever having seen those qualities modelled consistently.

Manhood is treated as instinctive rather than learned. When men struggle, the struggle is moralised instead of understood. Many men are navigating adulthood without maps, mentors, or reference points, while still being held to rigid standards.

Culture and the Discipline of Silence

The second verse, delivered in Sesotho, speaks directly to cultural training.

“Society e re rutile ho nka ka sefuba, ene re nke ka senna.”

Society taught us to take everything on the chest and take it as a man

This is not mockery of culture. It is description. Emotional restraint has long been framed as strength. Endurance as virtue. But the song does not romanticise this conditioning. It shows where it leads.

“Ho fihlela moo e ka reng kea khathala.”

Until the point where one becomes exhausted.

When pain has no outlet, it does not disappear. It accumulates. Silence does not build resilience indefinitely. It eventually produces numbness, withdrawal, or collapse.

Responsibility Without Support

One of the most important moments in Hoba Monna comes through a question that reveals imbalance.

“Ba re o hlokomele bana ba heno, empa nna ke hlokomelewa ke mang?”

They tell me to take care of my siblings, but who takes care of me?

This reflects a familiar reality in many African households. Men are expected to support siblings and extended family, to be stable, to be reliable, to carry others.

The follow up question sharpens the point.

“Ba re o ba loanele bana ba heno, empa nna ke loanela ke mang?”

They tell me to fight for my siblings, but who fights for me?

This is not self pity. It is recognition of imbalance. Responsibility flows outward. Care rarely flows back.

Smiling While Breaking

The final verse captures a reality many men live daily.

“Ke tlameha ke tsoe ke phande ke smile le batho kantle, ke robegile ka hare.”

I have to go outside hustle and smile with people, while I am broken inside.

This is not performance for praise. It is survival. In a society that responds harshly to male vulnerability, composure becomes armour. Smiling becomes a way to remain functional even while internally unraveling.

Why Hoba Monna Matters

Hoba Monna matters because it humanises men without excusing harm. It does not deny violence, irresponsibility, or failure. It asks a deeper question. What conditions produce men who are emotionally exhausted, silent, and disengaged?

Men carry pressures that are rarely named, let alone addressed. Economic strain. Cultural silence. Extended responsibility. Emotional isolation. None of these excuse destructive behaviour. Ignoring them guarantees its repetition.

Strength should not require emotional erasure. Responsibility should not require loneliness. Being a man should not mean carrying unbearable weight alone.

Hoba Monna is not asking for sympathy. It is asking for recognition. Recognition that men are human, that endurance has limits, and that silence is not the same as strength.

Sometimes music tells the truth long before society is ready to hear it.

What Does It Mean to Be a Modern Man in South Africa?

There is a quiet crisis unfolding in South African society, and it is not being spoken about honestly. It sits beneath the headlines, beneath the slogans, beneath the well funded campaigns and carefully worded statements. It is the crisis of what it means to be a man, and whether society still knows how to speak to men without turning them into symbols of everything that is wrong.

To be clear from the outset, this is not an attempt to deny the reality of violence, abuse, or harm committed by men. Those realities are undeniable and must be confronted directly. But confronting harm is not the same thing as condemning an entire group into silence, shame, and disengagement. Somewhere along the way, South Africa has begun to confuse accountability with collective guilt. That confusion is costing us more than we are willing to admit.

A generation of men is growing up hearing what they must not be. Do not be dominant. Do not be assertive. Do not be too strong. Do not lead in the wrong way. Do not speak incorrectly. Do not exist incorrectly. Yet there is far less clarity about what men should be. And when a society only knows how to criticise, but not how to guide, it should not be surprised when the result is confusion rather than change.

Historically, manhood in South Africa was not a vague or abstract idea. Across cultures and communities, despite their differences, there were shared expectations. A man was expected to take responsibility. He was expected to protect, to provide where possible, to discipline himself before disciplining others, and to anchor a family and a community. These roles were not always fulfilled perfectly, and they were often distorted by patriarchy, violence, and power. But they provided a moral structure. They gave men something to grow into.

That structure has largely collapsed, not because it was consciously dismantled with care, but because it was attacked without being replaced. Economic exclusion has made the provider role unreachable for millions. Unemployment has stripped men of dignity long before any social campaign ever did. Fatherlessness has removed mentorship at scale. Historical trauma has gone unprocessed. Into this vacuum, society has inserted a single dominant message, men are the problem.

Public discourse increasingly frames men primarily through statistics of violence, abuse, and crime. Media narratives repeat these images until they become identity. Campaigns, often well intentioned, speak about men as risks to be managed rather than people to be developed. Masculinity itself is treated as something that must be softened, neutralised, or apologised for, rather than disciplined and directed.

The idea of toxic masculinity is a good example. At its best, it was meant to describe specific harmful behaviours. At its worst, it has become a blunt instrument, used to suggest that masculinity itself is suspect. The problem is not that men are strong, assertive, or capable of leadership. The problem is what they do with those traits, and whether they are guided by moral responsibility. But this distinction is often lost. When masculinity is framed primarily as a danger, many men stop engaging altogether.

The psychological cost of this matters. When men are constantly told that their instincts are wrong, their presence is threatening, and their history is shameful, many respond not with reform, but with withdrawal. Silence replaces participation. Apathy replaces leadership. Some retreat into resentment. Others simply opt out of society altogether. None of these outcomes serve women, children, or communities.

There is also a deep contradiction at play. Society still expects men to show up in moments of crisis. To protect. To intervene. To take responsibility when things go wrong. Yet at the same time, it strips them of confidence, moral authority, and legitimacy. You cannot ask men to lead while constantly telling them they are unfit to do so. You cannot expect responsibility from people who are treated as permanent suspects.

This contradiction is especially stark in the South African context. Men are expected to navigate extreme inequality, unemployment, and social instability, while being held to moral standards that assume access to resources, opportunity, and support. A young man in a township is told to be responsible, but denied work. Told to be present, but raised without a father. Told to respect women, but shown daily through lived experience that power is exercised without fairness or justice. This does not excuse harmful behaviour, but it does explain why simplistic narratives fail.

What is missing from the conversation is a serious discussion about male development. Not punishment. Not slogans. Development. Men are not born knowing how to be disciplined, restrained, or ethical. These are learned behaviours, shaped through mentorship, expectation, and consequence. When society abandons this work, and replaces it with condemnation, it forfeits the very change it claims to want.

Accountability is essential. But accountability without dignity is ineffective. Men respond to standards when those standards are clear, consistent, and rooted in respect. Historically, rites of passage, work, fatherhood, and community roles provided these standards. Today, many men drift without markers, without recognition, without a sense of earned identity. In that vacuum, some seek belonging in destructive ways.

It is also worth asking who benefits from a society where men are disengaged. A passive man does not build. A confused man does not lead. A resentful man does not cooperate. The weakening of men does not strengthen women. It weakens families. Children do not benefit from absent fathers, whether that absence is physical or emotional. Communities do not thrive when half their population is treated as a problem to be managed rather than a resource to be cultivated.

This is not a call to return to outdated or abusive models of masculinity. Dominance, entitlement, and violence have no place in a healthy society. But neither does moral erasure. A constructive model of modern manhood must be rooted in responsibility, self mastery, service, and courage. Not the courage of aggression, but the courage of restraint. Not dominance over others, but mastery over oneself.

A modern South African man should be held to high standards. He should be expected to protect without controlling, to lead without abusing, to provide where possible and to contribute where he cannot. He should be challenged to confront his own behaviour honestly. But he should also be spoken to as someone capable of growth, not as an inherent threat.

The current narrative often fails this test. It speaks about men, not to them. It diagnoses without mentoring. It condemns without constructing. In doing so, it undermines its own goals. Social change does not happen through humiliation. It happens through clarity, expectation, and inclusion.

If South Africa is serious about addressing violence, inequality, and social breakdown, it must re learn how to speak to men with both firmness and respect. Men must be included as part of the solution, not positioned permanently as the source of the problem. This requires courage, because it means resisting easy narratives and simplistic villains.

A society that wants better men must be willing to invest in making them. That means mentorship. That means work opportunities. That means fathers who are supported, not mocked. That means cultural conversations that distinguish between harmful behaviour and male identity. That means acknowledging historical and economic realities without using them as excuses or weapons.

Being a modern man in South Africa should mean choosing responsibility in a context that often denies recognition. It should mean discipline in a culture that rewards excess. It should mean standing up, not because you are told you are dangerous, but because you are reminded that you matter.

Until we can have that conversation honestly, we will continue to talk past each other. And in that silence, the quiet crisis of men will deepen, with consequences that society will eventually be forced to confront.