It's a day to celebrate good dads, and remember good ones who are gone

Father's Day, like Halloween and Juneteenth, is a tradition made popular in the US, whence it spread to the rest of the world. In Greenwood cemetery in Spokane, Washington, is a gravestone with this inscription: "Sonora Smart Dodd, Founder of Father's Day, 1882-1978."

Sonora's father was William Smart, a veteran of the American Civil War who single-daddedly raised Sonora and her five brothers after their mother died in childbirth.

Legend has it that Sonora came up with the idea for Father's Day while listening to a Mother's Day sermon in 1909. She had hardly known her mother but she was mighty fond of dad.

Sonora's mission statement read: "Either we honour both our parents, mother and father, or let us desist from honouring either one. But to single out just one of our two parents and omit the other is the most grievous insult imaginable."

She persuaded church groups to back her and dads got their day, although it took a while. In 1966, US President Lyndon Johnson signed a proclamation declaring the third Sunday of June to be Father's Day. In 1972, when Sonora was 90, Richard Nixon established a permanent national day of observance for fathers in the US.

Now it's almost everywhere. I'm not sure what that says about globalisation or the influence of Western superpowers, but it says a lot about how much (some) children love their fathers.

My father died when I was 13. Had he lived longer we probably would have come into conflict at some point, as adolescents and parents always do. But because he died before I grew rebellious, every memory I have of him is imbued with love and kindness.

My father started taking me to the library with him every Saturday when I was four years old. I'd choose my books in the children's section and read them while he browsed the grown-up shelves. Usually I'd have finished mine by the time he'd picked his, so he would have to wait patiently while I returned the first lot and chose another pile. Without his patience I probably would not have become a writer.

I understand how Sonora felt about her dad because I felt the same way about mine. He most certainly deserved a special day.

Father's Day is not a sad day for me because I was lucky to have a good dad, even if only for a while. Not everyone grew up with a father who treated them every Saturday with a trip to the library. Not everyone grew up with a dad at all, for that matter, or a library, or books.

For those who never knew their fathers, or who had abusive fathers, or who do not speak to their fathers, or whose fathers were taken from them in violent and unnatural ways, today might be a day of bitterness

For those who never knew their fathers, or who had abusive fathers, or who do not speak to their fathers, or whose fathers were taken from them in violent and unnatural ways, today might be a day of bitterness. And for fathers who are estranged from or who have lost their children, it is no doubt also painful.

Fathers, as representatives of men in general, are tainted in a country where violence against women rages on inexplicably, agonisingly and unabatedly.

Those fathers who lead by example, those whose children grow up to be tolerant and compassionate, should be honoured.

Men who are good fathers, or men who would make good fathers, are those men who treat all women with the same respect they would wish to see bestowed on their daughters.

Men who rape and kill and abuse women also commit a secondary crime in besmirching the goodness of other, different men.

There are plenty of good dads who should be celebrated and treated today. In far too many cases this will not happen, at least not the way purveyors of luxury goods would have it happen, because of economic, geographic and other obstacles.

Death, divorce, argument and alienation are not the only ways for fathers to be separated from their children.

In a letter addressed to "Misses Zeni and Zindzi Mandela, c/o Mrs Iris Niki Xaba", dated June 23 1969, Nelson Mandela, imprisoned on Robben Island, wrote these words to his young daughters after their mother, Winnie Madikizela Mandela, had also been arrested and taken from them:

"Do not worry, my darlings, we have a lot of friends; they will look after you, and one day Mummy and Daddy will return and you will no longer be orphans without a home. Then we will also live peacefully and happily as all normal families do."

It would be another 21 years until Mandela was released. By then his daughters were adults, and that normal family life was never to be.

In light of the misery that plagues so many children and so many fathers for so many reasons, it might seem facile and insensitive to buy Father's Day cards and bottles of expensive whisky. But it isn't really. If you can, and if dad deserves it, go ahead and honour the good ones.