Patrick remembers his mother waking at four in the morning to heat water for his father's bath, iron his clothes and make his lunch. 'He was a hard-working man,' Patrick says, 'but my mother was subjected to be the kind of a person who was doing all the dirty work for him.” He labored in the heat all day, keeping the fire going in the ovens.

Patrick's father was a boilerman in a white-owned bakery. “I have never seen my father kissing my mother, but I have seen him many times beating up our mother. “We were born eight siblings at home,” he says.

In his view, South Africa’s past bred terrible fathers - including his own. His life is devoted to fighting violence against women and changing the culture that allows it to happen. Once a member of the armed wing of the African National Congress, he’s now the media and government relations manager for Sonke Gender Justice in Cape Town. Patrick has the restless intensity you might expect from a former guerrilla fighter. It's not easy to repair that damaged legacy, but Patrick Godana is trying. Under those circumstances, it was hard to hold a marriage or a family together. Men often left home for months or years at a time to work in mines, or held menial jobs that inflicted daily humiliations. South Africa’s economy under apartheid put huge pressure on black families.

South africa township violence