As South Africa struggles with rising discord, Dr Mzamo Masito highlights the urgent need to understand and support boys, challenging a system that conflates punishment with prevention.

South Africa is experiencing a rising social discord marked by inequality, violence and deepening mistrust. We are not approaching a crisis; we are already inside one. And unless it is addressed with depth and honesty, it will only worsen.

Why this book, why now

Much of our public response has focused on visibility-billboards, slogans and social media campaigns. While awareness matters, it is increasingly clear that performance without structural change does very little. It does not heal, protect or prevent.

This Country Hates Our Men/Boys by Dr Mzamo Masito arrives at this moment because it dares to do more than name the crisis. It interrogates the conditions that have produced it and asks how it might be interrupted. This is not a book about excusing harm; it is a book about origin, responsibility and prevention. It asks what happens when a society is more invested in condemnation than in development, and what the cost of that imbalance becomes over time.

Perspective

What Masito has observed, researched and articulated at a societal level mirrors what we, as clinicians, encounter daily in consulting rooms and hospital wards. The difference is scale. He observes the crowd; we see individuals, one at a...