In October of 2024, the Afrikan Liberation Hub (ALH) was invited to the G20 South Africa: Kickoff workshop for civil society. The event was hosted in a hotel in inner Joburg that has gained notoriety as a gathering space for civil society organisations and movements; ANEW Hotel eParktonian. We were excited to receive the invitation, hopeful that it came from an understanding of our work of amplifying grassroots movements that are doing the ‘leg work’ of economic systems change. The same groupings that are building wellbeing economies at a local level, attempting with little resources and no real policy backing, to offset negative and violating effects of the skewed global financial architecture. Equipped only with a strong sense of justice and solidarity amongst forgotten people.
Indulge us, we don’t have pictures of our reactions but you can imagine our glee at seizing the opportunity to bring the perspectives and experiences of ALH members to such highbrow discussions. The workshop was a capacity building exercise to ensure that SAs civil society have an understanding of the G20 and subgroup C20, through which much of our advocacy work would take place. We had colleagues from Brazil, specifically the C20 sherpa do a procedural handover; comrades from India shared their disillusionment with the state co-opting of the C20 and how it inspired their formation of WE20:The people’s summit on G20; South African government Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO) declared that the country’s presidency is dubbed THE PEOPLE’S G20 to serve as a constant reminder of the intention to put ordinary South Africans’ interests at the heart of all G20 processes, negotiations and decisions; Oxfam SA, Afrodad and Environmental Justice Network promised to champion the peoples’ needs in their participation in C20 processes and policy making, leading the rest of CSOs in attendance through identifying shared demands, the modes of engagement within the C20 and carving out working groups that would capture the diversity of sectors/concerns represented in the room.
We left with even higher enthusiasm, signing up to two Working Groups 1-Gender Equity & Feminist Just Economies and 5-Environmental Justice & Sustainable & Resilient Communities. Little did we know that we wouldn’t participate in any of them because those organisations that invited us to the Kickoff workshop were no longer in the C20 leadership. A development that was never really formally communicated, at least not from the initial facilitating organisations. In February, we reached out to Oxfam, reiterating our readiness to fully participate in the working groups and asking why we have yet to move past the planning stages and into policy building. For months until May 2025, we were only privy to rumours of a leadership battle in the C20 that has caused its total collapse. At the same time, we fielded questions from ALH members on outcomes of our participation in the C20, requests to consider joining other working groups so as to influence their area of concern. And for months, we couldn’t give them concrete answers for C20s’ seeming fall from the face of G20 processes. In this vacuum, more established working groups continued working, climate finance for instance have had several virtual meetings to design policy recommendations, they have written open letters to the SA G20 sherpa and are continuing to engage with researchers in the field. Climate finance is an issue that is inaccessible to many of the communities we work with, the language and framing alone is enough to send even the most well read amongst us to do mini desktop studies. We mention it here because the organisations leading the working group have long been working on fair climate financing solutions, they have climate economists and co-creation funds that made it so that their work was not dependent on C20s stability.
The working groups we were a part of however, were not held in the same way. It is 3 months away from the G20 Summit where the C20 is expected to put forth condensed civil society needs, demands, and recommendations for G20 leaders to consider. Yet, which civil society actually crafted these manifestos? How many grassroots organisations can confidently show up to G20 civil society activations knowing that their causes will be tabled? In one of our most recent ALH members’ meeting, several organisations expressed how G20 processes including the C20 are not worth their time or energy. How will the participation of these organisations feed the food insecure? Will attending all the meetings in fancy Joburg North hotels/conference venues create dignified work for unemployed youth? The climate finance policy recommendations won’t save mamas who are losing their crops every summer due flash floods. As for the Afrikan Liberation Hub, what moral and otherwise obligations do we have to continue dancing with these processes in the name of getting marginalised voices in the room when the very voices aren’t convinced of the change-making potential of this participation?
(By Inolofatseng Lekaba, Afrikan Liberation Hub)
(Image Credit: G20 South Africa: Kick-off Workshop Report)
