There is a line running through this conversation that refuses to let the listener hide behind ideology, outrage, or wounded righteousness: the child is not the battlefield.
In a second conversation about ‘This Country Hates Our Boys’, Nkepile Mabuse talks to Dr Mzamo Masito about the reactions to the book. It ultimately comes down to South Africa’s ability to hold multiple truths at once.
Can we admit that women have been deeply harmed, that boys can also be struggling, and that children often pay the price when adults turn unresolved pain into parenting?
South Africa, in Masito’s view, has become too quick to flatten complexity into camps, when the real work requires emotional maturity and the ability to sit inside contradiction.
Moving further into the content of the book, Nkepile reads out the deeply personal section where Masito reflects on hearing his father insulted, and internalising that as a judgment on himself, something many South African children would relate to.
The conversation’s most practical intervention comes through the distinction between maintenance and access.
Masito argues that too many people confuse financial support with actual parenting, when what children need is not just money but presence, quality time, and relational continuity.
His phrase is memorable because it is so blunt: maintenance is not access.
Again and again, the conversation returns to the same measure: the best interest of the child. Not revenge. Not pride. Not ideology. The child.
Watch the full episode.