One man's long walk to help SA fathers connect with their kids

Fitness trainer and motivational speaker Nyiko Masango, also known as Mr Dynamix, is walking over 400km to raise awareness about the importance of active fatherhood. 

He arrived in Pretoria on Monday.

Setting out from Tzaneen on January 20, he plans to reach Johannesburg on Wednesday after setting himself a target of walking the distance in 10 days.

Explaining his plans for Wednesday, he told TimesLIVE: "I'll be walking to Sandton, Johannesburg, and a couple of my friends have pledged to join me on this last leg of the walk."

Masango wants to send a simple but important message to fathers in South Africa: “I want fathers to be involved in the lives of their children, holistically. They need to see the importance of being involved fully in the lives of their children. They must be there spiritually and any other way," he said. 

"We need to stop this thing of just being there for our children financially."

He said this became his personal mission following his own experience when he did not have access to his child.

During the walk, he has taken breaks at night to sleep at backpackers in the towns he's passed through.

He said Monday - day 8 - was the hardest because of the heat. “It was cloudy throughout my walk and I had to deal with the hot weather when I walked from Hammanskraal to Pretoria. That was the tough part of the walk.”

To keep him going, friends offered support by joining him along the way, offering encouragement.

This was not the first gruelling task Masango has set for himself. In September last year he summited Mount Kilimanjaro to highlight the issue of absent fathers.

It's all part of a campaign he runs called Presence in Fatherhood, which encourages men to be actively involved in the lives of their children. He has a Facebook page where he interacts with fathers and offers support.

"Some of the problems we have in the country are due to absent fathers. I strongly believe that if fathers play an active role in the lives of their children, we wouldn't have some of the problems we see in society, like drugs and some petty crimes committed by our young people," he said. 

Rob Green of the Family Law Clinic said fathers have every right to have access to their children. 

“If they are not on the birth certificate then they have a bigger mountain to climb, because they need to prove paternity first and say they want to have access to their child or children,” he said.