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Sekwele Centre for Social Reflection

About Us

What is social reflection all about? And,what use could it be to anybody?

Seventeen years after the political change of 1994, many people in South Africa have been “left behind” by the Government’s economic policies. These policies– inextricably part of the neo-liberal programme associated with globalisation–have favoured the development of a small elite. They have also been associated with a vast and growing number of people suffering dehumanising poverty.

One obvious group, who could benefit from Sekwele’s work, is made up of these people whose needs have been neglected – who may be disaffected by the current political landscape, and yet be too exhausted by the last years of apartheid, and at a loss as to how to proceed now that black political leadership had been achieved.

This example gives a little picture of some of the issues which may be associated with “social reflection.” Yet, Sekwele’s agenda is broader: Sekwele can and must contribute to the development of a humane and politically conscious and powerful civil society.

Having taken on this task, Sekwele explore those opportunities that present themselves, where social reflection could help us understand and analyse how social problems are caused… and find solutions to these problems through recognizing our personal and collective dignity and power to change social conditions.

To summarise… Sekwele’s focus on reflection addresses two related issues:

First, facilitating a process to help people think systematically about the social causes of suffering, and simultaneously exploring individual and collective resources and strategies for addressing these problem for the common good. Even though some people believe that social problems are “natural” and need to take the form they do, this is not always true. The fact that these problems seem to express a “natural order of things,” is because we’ve collectively come to see them as “natural”. Any way body of the thought which presents humanly produced inequality as natural is ideology.

Our aims:

1. Sekwele will nature and cultivate a tradition of social reflection in society. 2. Sekwele will cooperate with other already active in the social sphere to support their  endeavours in support of social reflection

Social Reflection is one of the most effective ways in which we could empower the “downtrodden and the weak” to work for their own true liberation.

If our projects were 100% successful, We would have a society focused more on people than on things (and where people would not treat other people or themselves as things); focused more on the heart than just the head; respect the feminine in all of us and not only aspire to and ape masculine power; respect institution and inner knowing as sources of wisdom rather than only social conversation and clever argument; create more opportunity for the emergency of all forms of human excellence, not only the compulsive doing and achieving so valued in capitalist societies. We’d have a society more compassionate than profit-oriented, unwilling to allow itself to be misled by leaders who betray the common good. We’d have a society genuinely caring for all its members i.e. we’d have a humane society.