Growing up in post-apartheid South Africa, it took a long time for me to recognize how problematic it was for me to be the only black or gender diverse person in the room. I was a talented adolescent with a brilliant mind and never thought I was an exception. It took over a decade to understand how problematic my assimilation, performance and pandering to whiteness was. Understandably, this was a tool for survival. This played out whenever I had to use the right tone and accent at an airport immigration point, or when securing debt for the right education and even denying my own heritage to prevent experiencing harm. None of these protected me. Whilst I had access in certain areas – I was always black, queer and othered. I remember a choir manager vividly relay her experience in a car accident, where she said “this black guy…” as if I was not black. It perturbed me as I was always reminded that “I am not like the others”. So, I have taken these experiences with me in my activism and ensured I am never alone in the room. It’s not always pleasant, as some othered folks thrive in breaking diversity ceilings – but I am always bothered that the ceilings exist in the first place. This is not identity politics or about who struggles the most. For me, it is about acknowledging that life in its human form, is always expansive and evolving since time immemorial.
My adolescence and teenage years in South Africa taught me that measures of success, acceptance and merit always had some proximity to whiteness. I had an English tutor to improve my skills because my father had seen what having a heavy Nguni accent meant in the world: additional questions at a border control. Assumed as unintelligent and even not being confident enough. As a young adult in Botswana, I learned how to assimilate and deploy my accent to get ahead. Navigating passive aggressive comments and calculating my corporate career into material success. It took a long time to recognize that many people of colour learned and worked in a system where proximity to whiteness would be rewarded. After all, the companies and international development organizations we worked for were either owned or directed and controlled by a white man. More than a decade later, this is all reinforced by the election, conviction and subsequent election of Trump. Where it’s clear that the standard and measures are and have always been whiteness as a system for institutional, social, resource, knowledge and historical power. We have seen international law, foreign policy and even human rights advocacy, thrive and propel because of this system. The true determinant of power in the world and in philanthropy.
No one ever claims to hold power within philanthropy
The problem with whiteness as a system of power is that it can often be invisible. It can be felt when it deploys police at a routine stop, or ambiguity in job recruitment advert. I argue that the same applies with philanthropy. An invisible force that only ever wants to be known when it solicits or reprimands its participants (grant makers, civil society, donor advisors, etc.) or reports ‘successes’. In the same way many absolve themselves from whiteness as a system of racism, no one ever claims to hold power within philanthropy. I have met countless people who are well paid, who hold positions of power and/or are backed by endowments. Many of these always refer to another unknown power. From directors to project officers, trustees to backdoor funders; all of them referred to some other power over and above them. This is how systems work. They lie in nuance and ambiguity whilst explicit through tools and controls. Invisible, but always void of any of the accountability it demands of others. When it dies, it tends to implode in and of itself, rather than be dismantled externally.
The structure of international philanthropy is deeply rooted in control. Packaged as governance: it imbues its ways of working and distribution of influence in never ending planning, assessments and reporting. All while the world burns in cycles of regression, one policy, law and election at a time. As the impact of the Trump presidency shocked the development sector, this was no surprise for many in the global majority. We have learned how intentional anti-rights movements, political tyrants and authoritarian regimes are. The fact that many private funders doubled down on their existing partnerships or closed off emergency funds is telling. Especially those that did not receive US government funding. The othered groups, that cannot or refuse to assimilate, continue in the margins with little resources and all the risks. This is a form of economic violence that cannot be explained without understanding the demands of a capitalist society.
Seeking out the alternative system
The extraction and exploitation of people and planet cannot stop without political education. Particularly seeking alternatives outside the dominant system that does not work for us. The kind of alternative system seen from the Black Panther Party’s mutual aid and social safety nets in nutrition and health provisions for their community. Feminist Coalition’s mutual aid amidst Nigeria’s #EndSARS protests not only ensured legal and health assistance but provided an alternative when the government shut down their bank accounts. This reflects how in times of crisis, movements always find a way to care for and sustain each other with the local resources available to them. My solidarity visits where grassroots queer communities are in crisis are purely funded by conference per diems. Movements survive and build through sacrifice, love work, and the deep labor of gathering local resources, mutual support systems, and community philanthropy.
There are many examples of working outside the system when the system denies us our full humanity. This requires both resilience and an honest reckoning with how even tools like the “colouring book” – a metaphor for exploitative systems profiting off our sweat, tears, and trauma — are double-edged. Gil Scott-Heron’s “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” reminds me of why our existence as diverse, queer and grassroots activists of colour is a form of resistance throughout history. That whiteness may reflect as the background across all the pages of the colouring book, along with its participants who willingly colour within. However, the real unpredictable transformative change lies in plain sight: outside the colour lines. To include and grow an alternative system with movements building mutual aid, community philanthropy, local resources systems (all of which manifest the same way in different contexts), and blending that with allied international resources.
Dumi Gatsha (they/them) is the first ever gender diverse parliamentary candidate in Botswana, former facilitator of the #ShiftThePower UK Funders Collective and founder of Success Capital, a grassroots organisation working in the nexus of human rights and sustainable development.