Wowos Club

The multitude of degrees and other higher education qualifications, within these chat groups, must begin to work for our betterment. We can’t study to be only employable but fail to craft our own destiny.

Sicelo Mkosi 

Wowos Political Science Club (WPSC) is a cohort that will keep you posted on any political matter. The members in this cohort argue and write their own perspectives and well-thought-out analyses on any political theme. WPSC keeps members well-informed through dialogue. 

“I am a living testimony that South Africa is not free.” - Winnie Madikizela Mandela

In the Wowos Political Science Club, we remember uMama Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, who fought apartheid and struggled under its difficult, persistent circumstances. Today, Winnie has multiplied and is correcting, post her death, the history that was written for her and against her. Today, many now know what really took place.

18 May 2025

Dear Wowos, 

I took the time this evening to read about the Ashanti Nation of Akan tribes in what is today Ghana, and I was absolutely fascinated by their history and the story of the Golden Stool. I encourage you to read more about it here. 

Warm regards,

Wonga Ntshinga, 

Founder and Director 

Wowos Club 

“What I have tried to show is that in South Africa political power has always rested with white society. Not only have the whites been guilty of being on the offensive but, by some skilful manoeuvres, they have managed to control the responses of the blacks to the provocation. Not only have they kicked the black but they have also told him how to react to the kick. For a long time the black has been listening with patience to the advice he has been receiving on how best to respond to the kick. With painful slowness he is now beginning to show signs that it is his right and duty to respond to the kick in the way he sees fit.”  - I write what I Like by Steve Biko

“What we want is not black visibility but real black participation. In other words, it does not help us to see several quiet black faces in a multiracial student gathering which ultimately concentrates on what the white students believe are the needs for the black students”. - Biko delivered the address in December 1969 at the 1^st National Formation School of SASO, held at the University of Natal – Black Section, Wentworth, Durban.  

“The first step therefore is to make the black man come to himself; to pump back life into his empty shell; to infuse him with pride and dignity, to remind him of his complicity in the crime of allowing himself to be misused and therefore letting evil reign supreme in the country of his birth. This is what we mean by in-ward-looking process. This is the definition of ‘Black Consciousness’”. 

“The failure (or refusal) of a leader to foresee may be viewed as an ethical failure, because a serious ethical compromise today (when the usual judgement on ethical inadequacy is made) is sometimes the result of a failure to make the effort at an earlier date to foresee today’s events and take the right actions when there was freedom for initiative to act. The action that society labels “unethical” in the present moment is often really one of no choice. By this standard a lot of guilty people are walking around with an air innocence that they would not have if society were able always to pin the label “unethical” on the failure to foresee and the consequent failure to act constructively when there was freedom to act. 

Foresight is the “lead” that the leader has. Once leaders lose this lead and events start to force their hand, they are leaders in name only. They are not leading but are reacting to immediate events, and they probably will not long be leaders. There are abundant current examples of loss of leadership that stems from a failure to foresee what reasonably could have been foreseen, and from failure to act on that knowledge while the leaders had freedom to act.” 

From the book Servant Leadership by Robert K. Greenleaf (1977: 39)

@KofiAnnanFdn “Today’s real borders are not between nations but between powerful and powerless, free and fettered, privileged and humiliated” - #KofiAnnan