I still remember Mxo.
We were village boys together – barefoot, mischievous, inseparable. He was older than me, stronger, more confident. The kind of boy you assume will be fine. School never quite held him, though. He drifted in and out, struggled to keep pace, and eventually dropped out altogether. Like many boys in our village, he was also growing up without a father – navigating boyhood without a steady male presence to anchor, correct, or guide him.
No intervention.
No second chance.
No one asking what he needed.
Years later, Mxo took his own life.
There was no national headline. No panel discussion. Just another young man quietly erased. Mxo is not an anecdote. He is a pattern.
The boys who disappear
Every matric season, South Africa celebrates results with pride – colourful graphs, smiling faces, stories of resilience. But hidden in plain sight is a truth we rarely confront honestly:
Too many of our boys are missing.
They are under-represented in matric.
Under-represented in university admissions and over-represented in dropout statistics, unemployment, violence and suicide.
This is not a culture-war talking point. It is a national emergency.
The numbers tell a story – but not the whole one
South Africa’s population is relatively balanced by gender – roughly 51% female and 49% male, according to Statistics South Africa.
Yet by the time learners reach matric, that balance has shifted sharply.
In recent cohorts, girls account for about 56% of matric candidates, while boys make up just 44%. In 2023 alone, more than 70,000 more girls passed matric than boys, with girls also dominating Bachelor’s passes – the gateway to university study, according to the Department of Basic Education.
These numbers do not simply describe performance. They describe attrition.
Boys are not merely underperforming – many never make it to the final exam room.
Mxo didn’t.
This is not about blaming girls
Let’s be clear: the success of girls should be celebrated.
This is not a zero-sum game. Empowering girls does not require ignoring boys.
The crisis is not that girls are doing too well. The crisis is that boys are falling through the cracks – and we have normalised it.
A society cannot thrive while quietly losing half its sons.
An uncomfortable truth: School is not neutral
Modern schooling systems reward traits that, on average, appear earlier in girls.
Developmental neuroscience shows that the prefrontal cortex – responsible for impulse control, sustained attention, planning and emotional regulation – develops one to three years earlier in girls than in boys, according to research synthesised by the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Yet classrooms consistently reward:
- Sitting still
- Sustained focus
- Verbal fluency
- Compliance and emotional restraint
When boys struggle in these environments, they are rarely seen as developmentally delayed. They are labelled disruptive, lazy or uninterested.
That label sticks.
Mxo was not stupid. He was not incapable. He was misread – then left behind.
This pattern is not unique to South Africa. Across advanced economies, boys are more likely to repeat grades, disengage academically and exit school early, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). What makes South Africa different is the scale – and the cost of failure.
A feminised system without male anchors
Teaching is a heavily feminised profession.
In South Africa, about 70-75% of teachers are women, and in the Foundation Phase, the figure exceeds 80%, according to the Department of Basic Education.
This is not a criticism of women educators, who carry an extraordinary burden with dedication and skill.
But it does mean many boys move through school with little sustained exposure to positive male authority, mentorship, or modelling – particularly boys who already lack fathers at home.
Systems shape outcomes, even when no one intends harm.
When boys drop out, they don’t vanish
Boys who fall by the wayside don’t disappear; they reappear:
- In unemployment queues, where young men are significantly more likely to be economically inactive;
- In substance-abuse statistics;
- In violent-crime figures, where young men dominate both victim and perpetrator categories; and
- In suicide data, where men account for roughly 75-80% of suicides in South Africa, according to the South African Medical Research Council.
You see it every day at South Africa’s traffic lights.
Young boys – some barely in their teens – weaving between cars, begging at robots. Not in school. Not supervised. Not learning. Already rehearsing survival outside the formal economy. These boys are not anomalies; they are early indicators.
They are what educational disengagement looks like before it hardens into unemployment, criminality or despair. Long before a boy appears in a crime statistic or a prison register, he often appears first at a red light, asking strangers for spare change.
Mxo dropped out of school. Then he dropped out of society. Then he dropped out of life.
A boy who disengages from education does not remain neutral – he becomes a social casualty.
Beneath the education gap is a fatherhood gap
At the heart of this crisis lies something deeper than curriculum design: father absence.
South Africa has one of the highest rates of father absence globally. More than 60% of children do not live with their biological fathers, according to Statistics South Africa.
Mxo was one of them. Like many boys I grew up with, he navigated childhood and adolescence without a father’s presence – no consistent male correction, no modelling of restraint, no one to translate failure into growth rather than shame.
Absence is not only physical. It is emotional, moral, and formative.
Many boys are growing up with unanswered questions:
- How do I handle anger without violence?
- How do I fail without giving up?
- What does manhood look like over time?
Father presence alone does not guarantee success, but father absence dramatically increases risk – particularly when compounded by poverty, weak schooling and social instability.
In Village Boy, I write about growing up fatherless – guessing at manhood, improvising identity without guidance. Mxo and I were shaped by the same absence.
Where I survived, he did not. Not every boy makes it out.
What needs to change
If we are serious about addressing this crisis, slogans will not save us.
We need structural, early and sustained intervention.
That means:
- Early male mentorship, especially in grades R-3, when literacy, identity, and belonging are formed;
- Education models that recognise developmental differences, rather than punishing them as misconduct;
- Positive male presence in schools through mentors, coaches, artisans and community volunteers – not only teachers;
- Clear alternative pathways, including vocational and apprenticeship-linked education that restores dignity to non-academic routes; and
- Intervention before crisis, not discipline after failure
These are not radical ideas. Countries that have stabilised male outcomes treat boys not as defective girls, but as developing boys.
The question before us
How many Mxos must we lose before we act?
Do we want a future where young men feel unnecessary, unseen and unformed?
Or do we want grounded, emotionally mature men who contribute to families, communities, and nation-building?
Because where boys go, society follows.
And right now, too many of them are being left behind – quietly, and permanently. DM
Themba Dlamini is a husband, father of four, pastor and chartered accountant who loves South Africa – warts and all. He is the author of Village Boy: A Memoir of Fatherlessness, and writes to wrestle with hard truths, stir hope and help build a country in which his children can thrive.