Online Reporter
To be betrayed by those closest to you is a pain deeper than any wound inflicted by an enemy.
And a father is often seen as a protector, provider, and guiding light in a child’s life. But what happens when this very figure who should be a pillar of strength becomes the architect of his children’s downfall?
Across many homes and campuses, there are students whose greatest obstacles are not academic challenges, but the very men who brought them into this world.
The truth be told, a child who grows up in constant fear of a father’s rage may never develop the confidence to chase their dreams.
Many young people on campus are battling self-doubt because they were never told they were worthy of love or success. I have been balancing my writings where at one point I elucidated that sometimes our parents are the authors of our failures.
While oftentimes children are the authors of their failures, sometimes it’s not their fault.
Now it appears that some of the fathers have become monsters against their own children.
Like always, I write what I see and sometimes what I hear.
This week, I am taking a swipe at the monster fathers who are destroying the future of their children.
Obviously, I give thumbs up to the good fathers who do not sleep until their children have achieved their dreams, well done to you.
May all the evil fathers find no peace especially those who rape their own children. By virtue of me being a communicator, I have a privilege to come across some of these worrying cases. This past week alone, I have come across more than four cases of fathers who have been jailed for raping their daughters.
The sentences are ranging from 15 years going up.
Such fathers, through their actions and inactions, are dashing the dreams of their children, leaving them scared, broken and hopeless.
Instead of building their children up, they are tearing them down sometimes with violence, sexual abuse sometimes with neglect, and sometimes with the deepest betrayal imaginable. There are young girls in universities and schools today who carry not just books in their bags, but deep emotional wounds inflicted by their own fathers. Fathers who should shield them from harm have become the very predators they fear.
Some of these young women sit in classrooms with empty gazes, struggling to focus because they bear the trauma of nights filled with horror.
The psychological impact of such abuse is devastating.
I think I should give glory to the Almighty for not giving us transparent bodies otherwise every minute we would be seeing the heavy troubles our souls are carrying.
But still, trauma is easy to see from a distance. Studies have shown that victims of rape and abuse often struggle with depression, anxiety and an inability to perform well in their academics. A brilliant student with the potential to change the world is reduced to mere survival, her dreams snatched away by the very hands that should have lifted her.
Discipline is necessary in raising children, but when a father turns his home into a battlefield, he is not correcting but he is destroying.
Some students bear not just physical scars but emotional ones from years of being treated as punching bags. When a child’s sense of self-worth is shattered at home, no amount of academic achievement can truly fix it. Some fathers dash the dreams of their children not with fists or violence, but with neglect.
A child who grows up being told they are unwanted, unimportant, or a burden often internalises these words.
How many young women have had their dreams of education cut short because their fathers did not believe in educating girls?
Nelson Mandela once said, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” Yet, how many fathers deny their daughters this very weapon, leaving them powerless in a world that demands knowledge and skill? The tragedy of these stories is that they do not end in childhood.
Many young men or women who were raised with abuse or fists of fury grow into fathers or mothers who repeat the cycle.
Many young women who were never taught their worth or abused settle for abusive partners because they have never known love that does not hurt. But cycles can be broken.
To every student reading this who has suffered at the hands of a father who should have loved them, you are more than your pain.
You are not defined by the wounds inflicted upon you.
Your dreams are still valid, and you still have the power to rise above your past.
To fathers, if you have used your hands for harm instead of protection, your words for destruction instead of encouragement, it is not too late to change.
Those who have raped their own daughters, may you rot in jail.
A father’s role is not just to provide food and shelter but to nurture dreams, to uplift spirits, and to leave a legacy of love.
Let no father be the reason his children stop dreaming.
Let no father dash the future of the one he was meant to guide.
The true measure of a father is not in his strength, but in the strength he gives his children.
Until we meet for a toast
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Bongani Ndlovu