Mentorship, masculinity and change: A township programme rewriting boys’ futures

In 2021, as South Africa emerged from the strictest grip of Covid-19 restrictions, with some limits in place, Kolping Mbumba sat down for lunch to meet the woman who would later employ him. They spoke aboutgender-based violence(GBV), an issue that grew in urgency during the pandemic amid high levels of economic stress, social isolation and disruptions to support services for survivors of abuse. Years later, GBV would beclassified a national disasterin South Africa.

At the time, however, reports of violence against women and children had reached crisis levels, described then as a “second pandemic”. When Mbumba arrived at the meeting with businesswoman Warawadee Sukonpongpao-Harbich, he did not know that she was recruiting him into a hyper-local fight against GBV. Sukonpongpao-Harbich had recently founded and was financingHeroes Academy, an NGO aimed at driving social change in townships affected by high levels of GBV.

Her approach was to pair boys with positive male role models, helping them navigate adolescence in Cape Town’s townships, where many grow up without biological fathers and hypermasculinity often defines social norms. The goal was to reshape what it means to be “a good man”. Mbumba was sold on the idea.

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It hit close to home. He was nine years old when his father died, hastening a move from his homestead in the Eastern Cape to the shacks of Cape Town’s townships. Although his mother gave her all to protect him from the harshness of his new environment, life forced him to grow up fast.

He saw first-hand how street gangs in Nyanga recruited boys into rival factions, constantly at war over turf. In his teen years, he was one of them — not out of choice but necessity. To avoid getting beaten up while walking home from school, he sought the protection of one gang against the bullies of another.

Inevitably, school took a backseat to gang activities. If his mother had not enrolled him in a new school in the suburbs, his life would not have taken a different turn, one that led to Heroes Academy. From the outset, the NGO’s mission was the prevention of GBV: shaping boys into non-violent men and, in turn, safer communities for women and girls. The focus on boys’ development was no longer a means to an end — it became the end itself.

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