By Ntsikelelo Colossa – African Spiritual Practitioner/Traditional Healer

Positive masculinity is a nature that one needs to realise and tap into. It is like a beautiful meal seasoned with salt. Salt on its own may not always be easy to consume, but when added with purpose, it brings out the best taste and creates something meaningful and nourishing.

Being positive is like being that salt in society. A positive man brings balance, wisdom, peace, and understanding to the people around him. Positive masculinity is about understanding the dynamics of the workplace, the family, and the community while recognising that we are all equal even though we are given different responsibilities and different gifts in life.

Positive masculinity has everything to do with lifestyle, character, and the choice to build a positive vision for a safe and equal world.

It is waking up in the morning and helping to bath the children before work. It is assisting your wife, your partner, or supporting one another as a family. It is understanding that leadership in a home is not about acting superior or believing that because you are the breadwinner, the other person must carry every responsibility alone.

A positive man opens his mind and realises that the person left at home is also working hard in ways that are often unseen. Caring for a home, raising children, supporting a family emotionally and physically:  these are also forms of work. Positive masculinity is understanding this truth with wisdom and humility.

Even if you marry a strong woman who provides, supports, and stands firm for her family, you should never see her as a cleaning machine or someone who exists only to serve. She is a gift, a partner, and someone to build a generation with, filled with love, equality, respect, and understanding, where inequality becomes a thing of the past.

Positive masculinity also means understanding authority and respect. You may be a king in your home, but in workplaces and communities there are moments where you must submit to leadership and authority, whether that authority is younger or older than you, whether it is a woman, a man, a young girl, or a young boy. Respect is not weakness. It is wisdom.

Sometimes people underestimate others because of age, gender, or status. But positive masculinity understands that every person has value and a place in life. A positive attitude and personality will always create peace and unity.

Positive masculinity also carries a spiritual and religious responsibility. Every major faith teaches love, compassion, humility, justice, and accountability. A man who fears God understands that strength is not measured by dominance, violence, or control, but by self-discipline, kindness, patience, and the ability to protect and uplift others.

Religion teaches us that leadership is service. A man must serve his family, his community, and humanity with honesty and integrity. Faith reminds us that women and children are not possessions, but blessings entrusted to us by God to love, protect, respect, and support. A positive man understands that every human being is created with dignity and purpose.

The scriptures teach us to love our neighbours, to treat others with fairness, and to walk in humility. Positive masculinity therefore becomes a calling to build homes rooted in peace, communities rooted in justice, and relationships rooted in respect. A man who walks with spiritual wisdom will reject abuse, violence, oppression, and hatred because he understands that harming others also harms the soul of the community.

This culture of positivity and positive masculinity must be adopted because it is truly an antidote to GBVF and GBVH. Violence does not begin with actions alone; it begins with attitudes, beliefs, silence, and the misuse of power. Positive masculinity challenges these harmful behaviours by teaching accountability, emotional intelligence, equality, and respect.

Communities must support safety and accountability mechanisms that protect women, children, and vulnerable people. Positive men must speak out against abuse, report violence, protect victims, and hold one another accountable. Silence can no longer be accepted where injustice exists.

Positive masculinity means creating safe homes, safe workplaces, safe schools, safe churches, and safe communities where people can live without fear. Men must become part of the solution by mentoring young boys, teaching respect, rejecting toxic behaviour, and standing together for justice and equality.

As Africans, our wisdom has always taught us the importance of humanity, responsibility, and unity.

African Proverbs on Positive Masculinity and Leadership:

* “A child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth.”

  This reminds us that men and boys need guidance, love, discipline, and positive role models within the community.

* “Ubuntu ngumuntu ngabantu” – “A person is a person through other people.”

True masculinity is found in community, compassion, and mutual respect.

* “When there is no enemy within, the enemies outside cannot hurt you.”

Positive masculinity begins with self-control, discipline, and inner peace.

* “Wisdom is like a baobab tree; no one individual can embrace it.”

Men must learn from women, elders, children, and the community because wisdom belongs to everyone.

* “Rain does not fall on one roof alone.”

GBVF, inequality, and violence affect the whole community, and everyone has a responsibility to respond.

* “The strength of the family is in unity.”

 A home built on love, shared responsibility, and respect creates a healthier society.

Being a positive man is also about not abusing your position in life. Whether you have power, wealth, education, luck, or influence, positive masculinity teaches accountability, fairness, unity, and equality. True strength is not found in control or fear, but in compassion, discipline, responsibility, and love.

I have spent my life around both positive and negative people, and one thing they all have in common is choice. Choice is powerful. Every day, we choose who we want to become. We choose whether to build or destroy, whether to heal or to hurt, whether to lead with love or with pride.

And together, we can choose positivity.

Together, we can choose understanding.

Together, we can choose accountability.

Together, we can choose safety.

Together, we can choose Ubuntu.

Together, we can choose positive masculinity.