By Dinnah Nwabire,

Cape Town, 6 November: For Nandis in all our diversities.

“Did you see Nandi? She stepped up to the performance stage at the opening Gala, grabbed the microphone and immersed the crowd in the power of her voice as she sang Mafikizolo’s Ndihamba Nawe – it was like a revolution!”

Jodi Williams, a colleague at the African Women Development Fund (AWDF) shared this highlight of Nandi (the real activist’s name is listed in the credits) in our team debrief from last week’s Sexual Violence Research Initiative (SVRI) Forum. The forum convened over 1,500 global researchers, practitioners, survivors, activists, and funders focused on addressing violence against women and children (VAW&C).

Across the forum, one could not miss the bold intention and the visible actions by the Sexual Violence Research Initiative to hold space for, among others, African feminist researchers, queer people, survivors, activists, and global South-based movements to equitably engage.

Nandi, a lead activist with the Sex Workers Education and Advocacy Taskforce (SWEAT) was sponsored to access the SVRI Forum by AWDF, a pan-African feminist fund. As it were, she was not a listed performer but as soon as she could, she seized the stage, grabbed the microphone and sparked a powerful charge that sustained the energy in the room with her passion, skill, courage and stewardship. For millions of global South-based partners on whose invisibilised labour we stand, this claiming of space is not an unfamiliar pattern.

I left the team debrief with a lingering question. What could go right, if more Nandis not only accessed, but equitably shared centrality and voice in rooms filled with big-profile non-profits and a complex co-existence of the global North and South hierarchies? This article shares my reflections from communing with frontline activists, researchers, survivors, funder staff and new friends I made at the forum. It showcases the desired change, courage, fatigue, and leadership brought to the fore by several Nandis. Lastly, it invites us to advance truly feminist and decolonial convening spaces that centre the most excluded among us.

Before the convenings: We know that access is not a given…

Convenings are built on weeks and months of planning processes that are critical entry points to address historical participation barriers. The limited funding to most marginalised people’s organising exacerbates their exclusion as many cannot afford set registration fees, pre-paid session costs or air tickets and accommodation. Funder sponsorships like travel grants and bursaries can enable conveners to achieve equitable access to hosted forums. Without this funding, we will continue to recycle the usual voices both from the global North and the South which further narrows our perspective of the actual issues at hand.

In particular, what could go right is that funding access for more Nandis is a critical step in enabling the decentering of International NGOs that predominantly have guaranteed access funds to convenings. It also neutralises South-based intellectual hierarchies to usher in new and unfamiliar bodies, voices and leadership that enriches impact for gender justice.

Aside from affordability, it was disappointing to listen to colleagues list activists denied Cape Town visas. Inequitable, racist and xenophobic visa laws continue to disproportionately disadvantage participants from Africa and other global South countries. Conveners must choose host countries with lesser restrictions as a bare minimum. This sometimes means putting convening outcomes over pre-defined physical countries of work by host partners. Yet, these are just a few of the outermost layers on the ‘participation onion’ many Nandis must peel off to access. More layers unfold once they are in the actual convening spaces!

Disrupt and challenge exclusion within actual convening spaces

Any kind of disruption is uncomfortable for power and privilege, so, definitely many things could go right with the slightest attempt to divert from the norm. For Nandis, many must step out of crowds where it feels ‘safe’ to create own platforms of visibility and co-leadership.

Conveners and funders must meet this labour halfway by enabling most excluded people to influence the agendas and contribute to debate as speakers, moderators, facilitators, performers or presenters. It is critical to ensure that the politics of inclusion that define the broad forums and convenings genuinely trickle into conversation rooms like parallel sessions, side events or poster areas. Asking key questions like who accesses microphones, who gets spotlighted and who gets access to podiums, how frequently, why and why not can help conveners to flatten hierarchies in all sessions.

Connect the dots by tapping into national voices and movements

International and regional convening spaces often prioritise ‘flying in’ speakers, performers and other content leads with minimal attention to national, local and community-based movements in the host countries and regions. The irony of what could have otherwise gone right is the missed opportunity to enable audiences to connect the dots with what happens right under our noses. Nothing disconnects us more from the pressing needs of movements.

As a part of a national sex worker collective, activists like Nandi in themselves embody a discomfort to the ways discrimination finds itself in convening spaces. Thus, funding their presence is a political act against erasure. Elsewhere, South-based feminist funds have argued that what makes feminist collectives, activists and feminist funders unique, is, among others, their connection to the issues they seek to address through lived experiences and sharing of community. Prioritising community and national movements in host countries is a critical reminder of how close we are to the issues and how grounding in this knowledge validates and regenerates our organising.

Enabling what could go right: some critical priorities

1. Visibilise the Nandis

A lot of the work led by individual activists and non-traditional entities remains largely shadowed by International NGOs and big-brand nonprofits. In the exhibition hall, groups of Nandis from ‘unregistered’ collectives wondered what alternatives there were to visibility in a space taken up by big brand logos that left minimal space for them to connect and share their work in intimate non-conventional ways.

Similarly, in session rooms, several Nandis called out their fatigue from ‘collaborative’ studies that never mentioned them or the collectives they affiliated to. Their intellect, labour, lived realities and unique knowledge of study communities, erased by ‘well-meaning’ global North researchers and South-based agents of intellectual hierarchies who proudly called on them to come and “briefly share testimonies” after main study presentations were done. Conveners must track who the lead researchers are and how non-researcher experts and participating communities, activists and volunteers are credited, cited and visibilised.

1. Pursue long-term transformation

Convening spaces must enable the reimagining of how systems of oppression are constructed and deliberately seek to disrupt those patterns. If the goal is to decolonise the global research economy, Nandis demand more of us than exchanging tips for equitable partnerships between global North and global South researchers. We can identify and sponsor the centring of lead global South voices on subjects of decolonisation, research and gender like African feminist Sylvia Tamale to promote the needed consciousness and narrative shifts in convenings. In addition, the use of theatre and opportunities for multilingual engagement that includes bringing in non-colonial languages will radically transform our convening spaces.

1. Centre care and healing

For many Nandis, it is already many years of dealing with extractive research approaches and the harm of violence on their bodies and souls. These wounds often get re-opened in convening spaces with available but not fully encompassing spaces and tools for collective care, healing and wellness. Funders must accompany conveners to access and install diverse healing and collective care tools that embody the politics of decoloniality beyond Western medicalised framings of mental health and wellness.

Credits with permission

• The identity of Nandi depicted in this article seeks to honour the leadership of Pam Ntshekula and the work of the Sex Workers Education and Advocacy Taskforce (SWEAT), the biggest sex worker organization in South Africa that advocates for full decriminalisation of  sex work.
• I acknowledge the input of Elizabeth Dartnall and Lizle Loots of the SVRI and Jodi Williams and Nana Zulu at AWDF.
• Photo courtesy of SVRI

Written by: Dinnah Nabwire | Independent Policy Researcher and Programmes Manager – Nurturing at the African Women’s Development Fund