OUR SERVICES
ADVISORY PRACTICE
Including Society provides advice and facilitation skills on equality, diversity and inclusion to a broad spectrum of organisations including schools and private companies. Using our expertise in constitutional law we advise on client’s internal policies, campaigns and projects with the objective of ensuring that the values of equality and inclusion are enhanced.
Using lessons learnt from the making of South Africa’s Constitutional Court we will provide advice on spatial design and architecture so as to ensure a holistically inclusive environment.
Including Society partners with brands for campaigns and projects that we believe in and that our audience will respond to and engage with. As an advisory practice with integrity and knowledgeable in the relevant themes and in reaching people effectively and strategically, we collaborate thoughtfully with partners to realise campaign and project objectives.
CONVERSATIONS WORKSHOPS AND CONFERENCES
Including Society Founder, Lwando Xaso, has presented at a variety of conferences, workshops and festivals including:
The Daily Maverick’s – The Gathering
WPP Stream
Discovery Heavy Chefs
She shares her insights on inclusion through sharing her knowledge of the South African Constitution, its history and the making of the Constitutional Court as evidence and a blueprint of how change happens.
Lwando’s talks convey difficult truths about our country and the world whilst maintaining a positive, inspirational and forward-looking outlook.
CONVERSATIONAL LUNCHES
Our signature immersive experience is the conversation lunch where our participants from different backgrounds gather around a table to explore questions of inclusion and exclusion whilst enjoying a carefully curated menu in a meaningful space with a rich history.
We curate questions which appear on a three-course menu that is curated by our partner- Mpho Deane who owns “Food I Love you”- an experiential food company. Mpho makes food that shows the power of inclusion and fusion - so the food at our lunches has a story and meaning.
The lunches always happen at a transformed site such as Victoria Yards which was a debilitated site that has recently been transformed into a space for entrepreneurs and artists.
IMMERSIVE EXPERIENCES
Including Society curates immersive experiences that practically, thoughtfully and creatively explore the themes of inclusion.
Using dynamic stories, venues and guest speakers and offer transformative and memorable experiences for all our guests whether they are students or members of the private sector looking for a meaningful team-building experience.
We offer experiences at Constitution Hill which to us represents a transformed space. Constitution Hill is a feat of architectural hope and daring. The Constitutional Court is a building that represents the Constitution- a physical manifestation of our constitutional democracy. The Court is designed in a way that shows it is concerned with voicing the aspirations of the marginalised.
Our founder, Lwando Xaso, was a former law clerk at the Constitutional Court, and is now a Trustee of the Constitutional Court which means she has incredible insight on the transformation of Constitution Hill and the making of the Constitutional Court and the different creative vernaculars it uses in order to include people from different walks of life. Including Society firmly believes that Constitution Hill offers a blueprint for transformation, humanity and consciousness.
Join her on a walk and talk tour of Constitutional Hill as a team.
TEACHING
We offer a series of lectures on the following topics:
An introduction to Constitutional Law
Creating a conscious society through the law
The meaning of truth, justice and reparations in a post conflict society
How does change happen? What we can learn from a country that transformed a prison into a court
writing
The Book- MADE IN SOUTH AFRICA: A BLACK WOMAN’S STORIES OF RAGE, RESISTANCE AND PROGRESS
Launching on 15 October 2020
Made in South Africa- A Black Woman’s Stories of Rage, Resistance and Progress
Like many South Africans her age Lwando Xaso came of age alongside a “new” South Africa which like her has crawled, walked, fell and which now bravely attempts to rise again. From Mandela to Zuma, she captures the highs and lows of being a black woman forging a path in a young constitutional democracy.
In Made in South Africa – A Black Woman’s Stories of Rage, Resistance and Progress, Xaso examines with a sharp, searching vision some of the events that have shaped her experience of South Africa with incredible potential but weighed down by persisting racism, cultural appropriation, sexism and corruption, all legacies of a complicated history.
As a young corporate lawyer intent on making partner at a big firm, her direction in life was changed by a significant personal experience of the oppressive capacity of a democratic government when it unjustly fired close family friend and mentor, Adv Vusi Pikoli, as the country’s National Director of Public Prosecutions.
She found herself on his legal team and the turmoil the case created inside her led her to become a constitutional lawyer and to pick up her pen and produce the stories that make up this book. Her heart fills with pride when the country moves forward and weeps when it stumbles, but she always retains faith in what the Constitution can do.
Xaso’s outlook is also shaped by her experience of clerking at the Constitutional Court for Justice Edwin Cameron which deepened her respect and admiration of the South African Constitution and what it really means for a resilient people to continually strive to live up to its moral and legal standards. Despite the number of times that South Africa has stumbled, Xaso’s forward looking resolve expresses an abiding faith in the people of South Africa to achieve the impossible.