In seeking to deepen our own practice of grantmaking, we invited over 30 grantmakers, philanthropy practitioners, and civil society activists to a Critical Conversation about how we can better support local struggles. We explored ACT Ubumbano’s Solidarity Support Facility, and heard from partners who receive grants and those who channel funds to local struggles. You can watch the conversation here.
We hope you will enjoy our last newsletter. It is a bumper edition with lots of interesting things for you to look at now and during December. Please share it widely, and if you have any comment or feedback please write to us.
Our office will close on 13 December until 6 January 2025. We hope to recharge and rest with family and friends, and wish you all the joy and blessings that the festive season brings. To all our Christian friends and comrades, may the joy of Christ’s birth herald peace and justice in all our lives. Sadly, there are too many places in our world this peace is absent. ACT Ubumbano remains in solidarity with all those who are enduring suffering and persecution right now – in Gaza, Sudan, and all the places where war and injustice are being perpetrated. We stand in solidarity with the people of Mozambique at this difficult time.
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Welcome to the ACT Ubumbano Solidarity Hub in Berlin 2024!” These were simple and mundane words at the start of a two-day event, but they masked the unusual nature of this particular gathering.
This was a gathering of development actors attempting to question and go beyond the dominant patterns of development discourse – how we externalise the problem and name target groups; how we become dependent on technical expert knowledge, usually racialised, to provide the current critical framing; how we prioritise the developing of mechanisms of monitoring, compliance, accountability to structure our relations. It was an attempt to provide and hold a space for the questioning and deepening of our practices that will expose and disrupt the coloniality of our development practices, and explore practices of authentic solidarity. These are not comfortable conversations as we ‘interrogate’ our own practices and assumptions, but I noted some practices in the conversations that could be a resource for examining our own practices.
The invitation in Berlin was to a space – a space to encounter, to engage, to be present. It was not an invitation to a programme of presentations and discussions of ideas, and agreement on a way forward for organisations. By the holding of a space, and not just managing an agenda of a programme, it allowed for people to be present, to speak and be heard, with all the richness of their vulnerability and uncertainties, their passion and questions. Holding such a space allowed the possibility of power dynamics within the room to be named (gender, race, organisational hierarchy) and – where people were willing – to engage those power dynamics and test different articulations. An invitation to a space seemed to enable participants to bring themselves and what mattered to them into the engagements, and on occasion risk naming and re-presenting the principles and values that make them who they are. It reminded me of the oft repeated phrase: the personal is political, and the political is personal – by making a space for the foregrounding of our humanity we are able to explore practices of dignity.
It may be stating the obvious, but I was struck by the connections that were made between participants in the spaces that were available. It seemed as though there was a longing to find others with whom we could (tentatively) share our questions, our frustrations and grief from the journey within the single story of the ‘development as progress’ world. The connections were between countries; between, but not necessarily on behalf of, organisations; crossing different levels and departments of organisations. Yes, there was the usual ‘networking’. But there were also expressions of our common deeply embeddedness within the systems of ‘progress’; a deepening awareness of how our practices, knowledges, imaginations are deeply shaped by coloniality and the push for the solution; and how our attempts to ‘do good’ and manage perfect systems is part of the problem itself. Questions were asked about what authentic solidarity could look like in our contexts, and how our practices are and could be creating cracks within the dehumanising development world – cracks offering inspiration and new imaginations of how to be human together.
This might seem a bit of a harsh phrasing, but I think it offers the potential for a real shift in our development practice. This phrase was used in the Berlin gathering in response to requests for more challenging input to provide further critical insights for the discussion. However, it was observed how this was shifting the responsibility for learning to the other, and not sufficiently acknowledging our own complicity. The solidarity hub in Berlin was a space for engagement, critique and learning – yet participants were waiting for the ‘othered’ expert to provide the insight. Vanessa Andreotti (in her book Hospicing Modernity) describes how modernity and colonialism infantilises us, leaving us feeling uncertain and helpless in the face of hegemonic discourse and articulations, looking to experts to string it together for us. She names the necessity for us to ‘grow up, show up’ – acknowledge our complicity and take responsibility for our own learning and practice, disrupting the dominance of the expert. As the challenge and opportunity for critique and learning is placed back with the group as a whole and all participants, it shifts what is at stake and draws on the capacities, passion and commitment of the diverse group to generate insights, knowledge and new possibilities of practice.
It may seem strange in the midst of development practitioners and activists to point to the value and importance of silence – not our default setting! At the gathering in Berlin there were a couple of experiences of silence and stillness, led by both facilitators and participants on different occasions. The silence was an equalising process allowing space and time for us all to be present (not just the dominant voice and knowledge) and providing a moment for us all to check what lived within us and how we were making that known. Somehow the stillness embodied our discussions within each of us and allowed us to connect to our humanity being present in our more than human world.
In the context of deafening violence and assaults on our humanity, maybe foregrounding our brutalised and gifted humanity and our experiments of solidarity will disrupt these patterns of dehumanisation and open those cracks where life surprises us and inspires our practice.
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Over 85 activists from the region and beyond spent 2 days in Johannesburg reflecting on their role in the struggles of their communities. They were challenged to move out of their comfort zones and explore how their own practice was helping change the status quo, or whether it was reinforcing the unequal power relations that often characterize the work of civil society. It was an immensely rich conversation. It was a first Hub for the majority of participants, and we hope they returned home with a commitment to a more critical approach to their work.
You can access the picture gallery here, and we hope to share the Hub experience via written and audio-visual media later on.
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Welcome to the ACT Ubumbano Solidarity Hub in Berlin 2024!” These were simple and mundane words at the start of a two-day event, but they masked the unusual nature of this particular gathering.
This was a gathering of development actors attempting to question and go beyond the dominant patterns of development discourse – how we externalise the problem and name target groups; how we become dependent on technical expert knowledge, usually racialised, to provide the current critical framing; how we prioritise the developing of mechanisms of monitoring, compliance, accountability to structure our relations. It was an attempt to provide and hold a space for the questioning and deepening of our practices that will expose and disrupt the coloniality of our development practices, and explore practices of authentic solidarity. These are not comfortable conversations as we ‘interrogate’ our own practices and assumptions, but I noted some practices in the conversations that could be a resource for examining our own practices.
The invitation in Berlin was to a space – a space to encounter, to engage, to be present. It was not an invitation to a programme of presentations and discussions of ideas, and agreement on a way forward for organisations. By the holding of a space, and not just managing an agenda of a programme, it allowed for people to be present, to speak and be heard, with all the richness of their vulnerability and uncertainties, their passion and questions. Holding such a space allowed the possibility of power dynamics within the room to be named (gender, race, organisational hierarchy) and – where people were willing – to engage those power dynamics and test different articulations. An invitation to a space seemed to enable participants to bring themselves and what mattered to them into the engagements, and on occasion risk naming and re-presenting the principles and values that make them who they are. It reminded me of the oft repeated phrase: the personal is political, and the political is personal – by making a space for the foregrounding of our humanity we are able to explore practices of dignity.
It may be stating the obvious, but I was struck by the connections that were made between participants in the spaces that were available. It seemed as though there was a longing to find others with whom we could (tentatively) share our questions, our frustrations and grief from the journey within the single story of the ‘development as progress’ world. The connections were between countries; between, but not necessarily on behalf of, organisations; crossing different levels and departments of organisations. Yes, there was the usual ‘networking’. But there were also expressions of our common deeply embeddedness within the systems of ‘progress’; a deepening awareness of how our practices, knowledges, imaginations are deeply shaped by coloniality and the push for the solution; and how our attempts to ‘do good’ and manage perfect systems is part of the problem itself. Questions were asked about what authentic solidarity could look like in our contexts, and how our practices are and could be creating cracks within the dehumanising development world – cracks offering inspiration and new imaginations of how to be human together.
This might seem a bit of a harsh phrasing, but I think it offers the potential for a real shift in our development practice. This phrase was used in the Berlin gathering in response to requests for more challenging input to provide further critical insights for the discussion. However, it was observed how this was shifting the responsibility for learning to the other, and not sufficiently acknowledging our own complicity. The solidarity hub in Berlin was a space for engagement, critique and learning – yet participants were waiting for the ‘othered’ expert to provide the insight. Vanessa Andreotti (in her book Hospicing Modernity) describes how modernity and colonialism infantilises us, leaving us feeling uncertain and helpless in the face of hegemonic discourse and articulations, looking to experts to string it together for us. She names the necessity for us to ‘grow up, show up’ – acknowledge our complicity and take responsibility for our own learning and practice, disrupting the dominance of the expert. As the challenge and opportunity for critique and learning is placed back with the group as a whole and all participants, it shifts what is at stake and draws on the capacities, passion and commitment of the diverse group to generate insights, knowledge and new possibilities of practice.
It may seem strange in the midst of development practitioners and activists to point to the value and importance of silence – not our default setting! At the gathering in Berlin there were a couple of experiences of silence and stillness, led by both facilitators and participants on different occasions. The silence was an equalising process allowing space and time for us all to be present (not just the dominant voice and knowledge) and providing a moment for us all to check what lived within us and how we were making that known. Somehow the stillness embodied our discussions within each of us and allowed us to connect to our humanity being present in our more than human world.
In the context of deafening violence and assaults on our humanity, maybe foregrounding our brutalised and gifted humanity and our experiments of solidarity will disrupt these patterns of dehumanisation and open those cracks where life surprises us and inspires our practice.
The Commonwealth Foundation offers grants of up to £30,000 for projects lasting up to two years to civil society organisations in the Commonwealth. They support projects that seek to facilitate constructive engagement between civil society and decision-makers, including civil society participation in policy development and implementation.
To check eligibility criteria and apply, click here. The deadline for this year’s call is 24 October 2024 1pm BST.
The third Durban International Book Fair #DIBF2024, takes place from 27 November to 1 December 2024 at Eduvos, Umhlanga. Durban is Africa’s only UNESCO City of Literature. This year’s main theme goes back to basics, to “Once Upon a Time…” as the country grapples with the crisis according to the Progress in International Reading and Literacy Study (Pirls) that 81% of grade 4 South African children cannot read with comprehension in any language.
Join us at #DIBF2024 as we dive into the magic of storytelling. The enduring allure of stories that have shaped human culture and been cherished across generations will be the main focus of the fair.
Don’t Miss Out! Secure your ticket to #DIBF2024 today at www.madeindurban.co.za.
