Sisi Kwa Sisi
Free-and-Fearless
thinkers in Tanzania
Sisi
Kwa Sisi is a humanist community based organization with the object
of mobilizing and organizing people at the grassroots level for
positive social changes through a human centred rational, scientific
approach. The group has its headquarters in Mbeya town, in the southern
highlands of Tanzania, bordering Zambia and Malawi. Sisi Kwa Sisi
was founded in 1991 by Mr. Nsajigwa Mwasokwa together with 5 other
young persons.
Mission
The mission of Sisi Kwa Sisi is to work very hard for the self-empowerment
of people and families at the grassroots (peasants, youth, women
and children) economically, educationally and ethically and in this
way bring positive and progressive social changes in communities.
Sisi
Kwa Sisi is a circle of philosophically inclined individuals who
are critical of supernaturalism -traditional as well as religious-
and who have embraced Rationalism. Through constant reading for
intellectual enlightenment, the group discovered Humanism and came
to realise that Humanist principles is what the group had been practising
for many years. In 2002, Mr. Nsajigwa Mwasokwa of Sisi Kwa Sisi
participated in the IHEU World Congress and met many humanist leaders
from other countries.
To
capture Sisi Kwa Sisi's mission in one statement: "to
recapture the renaissance spirit, and to work towards an African
enlightenment!"
Youth
The
movement has many youth sympathizers. Many of them are inquisitive
and searching for the meaning of their lives; they are evolving
intellectually in varying degrees.
It
is important to Sisi Kwa Sisi that young people (boys and girls)
are encouraged to think freely and develop an inquiring mind without
being blocked by fear due to dogma, tradition, superstition, authority,
tenacity, absolutism, fanaticism and fatalism. Sisi Kwa Sisi aims
to create freethinking: Freed from intellectual and mental
dependence. Free from arrogance, prejudice and intellectual tyranny,
even if
it be the tyranny of majority's opinion (an argumentum ad populum).
Main
objectives
The
objectives of Sisi Kwa Sisi are:
- The
fight against abject poverty by teaching, inspiring, mobilizing,
and organizing unemployed youth in urban centers. The organization
stimulates these young people to return back to agricultural farming
where they can utilize the land and all its natural resources
effectively for their good, stable, secured (and thus better)
livelihood.
- Initiating
appropriate technologies to transform rural farming from its presently
subsistence level into an agricultural industry capable of providing
better life to the majority of the youth, peasants and women.
- The
development of responsible tourism in the Mbeya Region that is
beneficial to people at the grassroots and that preserves the
environment and ecology.
- Encourage
knowledge-seeking & heuristic learning by giving young people
a chance to discover varieties of progressive philosophical traditions
stemming from different cultures. Progressive philosophy stands
for ideas that encourage and love wisdom (for its own sake), reasoning,
logic, analytical and critical thinking. This kind of attitude
is very important and necessary for acting in the modern, scientific,
global world we are living in.
- Sisi
Kwa Sisi aims for a peacefully and pluralistic outlook on life
in the communities the group is active. People are encouraged
to think critically for themselves before they act, to find solutions
for their problems and to respect other people's viewpoints. Sisi
Kwa Sisi aims also to promote moral values that encourage and
support high ethical standards of behaviour: virtues as altruism,
teamwork, hospitality, humanitarianism, voluntarism, patience,
sympathy, etc.
- Sisi
Kwa Sisi works for the creation and development of small-scale-industries
(SSI) as for creating employment and generating income to the
community. SSI is the process of making raw materials into finished
products.
Activities
Educational
activities
Sisi Kwa Sisi has been mobilizing young persons and poor communities
by:
-seminars/symposia sensitisation,
-teaching,
-counselling.
Socio-economic
activities
Lack of facilities is a constraint on the organization's activities.
Sisi Kwa Sisi doesn't receive support from the government because
of it's apolitical stance: "a 'mistake' of not belonging to
the ruling party or any other". To support its activities,
Sisi Kwa Sisi undertakes therefore economic-based activities that
have been the source of funding for Sisi Kwa Sisi's other activities.
These economic based activities are at the same time an integrated
part of the organization's aims:
-Milk selling (1991-1995),
-Crop production and sales (1993-1995),
-Working at a farm to start a communitarian model (1995-1997),
-Cultural tourism project (1998-2003).
The challenge in Africa
For Humanism to become praxis of renaissance in Africa, the following
needs be done:
-We
have varieties of starvation in Africa, one is shortage of books
and materials on the Humanist tradition. We need containers of positive-progressive
books on naturalism, etc. Likewise audio's and films by leading
freethinkers are needed.
-We
need established centres/platforms of debate. In particular we need
to make the Humanist message simple to the people at the grassroots
level.
-Very
important is the economic empowerment in Africa. Humanists must
deal here with the peoples basic needs and be part of peoples
solution by way of problem solving in meeting several of their economic
problems/miseries. Abject poverty is real in Africa. And that explains
in part why the fallacies in the form of religion, politics and
superstition, keep on having a strong appeal on people. A model
of a Humanist economic project as inspiration to other areas is
highly needed. In Tanzania in particular, such an experiment is
highly welcome.
-It
would be good when there would be established humanist academians
and humanist academic departments in Africa.
Support of the International Humanist Community
The Humanist circles in Africa need all the support from fellow
freethinkers circles around the world. It is for the first time
in history that secularist humanist-based teachings are being established
here. By large, lack of facilities is the foremost hurdle.
There needs to be exchange programmes, visits between Humanists.
This breaks isolationism especially here in Africa,
where because of the non-existent of freethinkers fellow groups
nearby, one is mentally and intellectually alone. Also let there
be efforts to establish Humanist Academicians in Africa.
Contact
Postal Address: Sisi kwa Sisi
P.O. BOX 2869 or 1562 Mbeya Tanzania.
Also: P.O. BOX 12969 Dar-es-salaam Tanzania.
E-mail: sisikwasisi@hotmail.com,
Contact person: Nsajigwa Mwasokwa
Website: www.infojep.com/culturaltours/mbeya.html
(Sisi Kwa Sisi cultural toursim project)
Involvement
in IHEYO
Sisi Kwa Sisi attends the IHEYO conferences and is part of AHAL,
the African Humanist Alliance.
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Teenage
Life Program (TELIP)
Uhuru street Rd, Ilala, P.O. Box 31891, Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania
+255 744 805226, teenagelifetz@hotmail.com
*Teenage Life Programme is a consultative member of IHEYO.
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