Jay Naidoo argues that professionalised civil society risks becoming more accountable to donors and institutions than to the communities it claims to represent - and challenges organisations to disclose their funding, agendas and results.
I do not speak as an outsider. I come from movements, from workers organising when it could cost you your job, your freedom and sometimes your life.
I have also spent my life inside institutions: trade unions, government, international organisations, foundations and global civil society.
At 71, I believe an elder's responsibility is to ask uncomfortable questions.
When did activism become a profession? When did movements become organisations, organisations become institutions, and institutions become bureaucracies dependent on the very structures they were created to challenge?
When did struggle become a funding proposal, communities become "beneficiaries" and solidarity become a "deliverable"?
When did resistance require a logframe? And when did we become more accountable to donors than to the people whose names appear in our proposals?
Stop being wallflowers at the banquet of power
How many more COPs, summits, side events, stakeholder dialogues and declarations?
How many choreographed consultations with governments, corporations, the UN, the World Bank and the IMF?
How often do we congratulate ourselves for winning three paragraphs in a communiqué nobody remembers six months later?
Are we changing the system, or is the system changing us? There is a danger in being permanently invited into the room.
Eventually you fear losing your chair. And once access becomes your currency, speaking truth becomes expensive.
Follow the money Institutional funding does not automatically compromise an organisation. Many people do courageous work with it.
But every organisation should ask: Can you publicly challenge your largest donor?
Oppose the government funding your programme? Expose a corporation that has become your "partner"? Reject money whose conditions compromise your purpose?
Can you walk away? If you cannot walk away, you are not independent.
Look at which struggles get funded and which don't. Which language attracts money and which frightens donors?
Which movements are called "constructive partners" and which "radical" or "difficult"? Follow the money.
It often shows where the boundaries of acceptable dissent have been drawn. Look in the mirror I ask every established organisation to conduct a different audit.
Not another donor evaluation, but a look at the people named in your mission statement. Are their lives actually better because you exist? If you work with women, ask women.
If you work on poverty, ask poor communities. If you work with Indigenous peoples, ask them and their authentic knowledge holders, not travelling salesmen.
If you work on climate justice, ask people living beside poisoned rivers and abandoned mines. If you represent workers, ask whether workers have more power.
Don't answer for them. Let them answer, and have the courage to publish what they say. That is accountability.
The warning inside Greenpeace Around 2011, after Occupy Wall Street, I sat in an executive meeting of Greenpeace International.
Kumi Naidoo had recently become its first African Executive Director. A serious debate arose over whether to associate with Occupy.
The concern was: Who are these people? Can we risk the Greenpeace brand? The question itself was revealing. An organisation born of direct action was confronted by ordinary people doing exactly that, and worried about its brand.
A movement develops an organisation. The organisation develops a bureaucracy, then funding streams, then professional careers, then institutional interests and brands.
Eventually, protecting the organisation can matter more than advancing the struggle that created it. Nobody decides to betray the movement. I
t happens slowly, almost invisibly, until the radical movement outside your headquarters becomes the reputational risk.
Disenfranchised activism
Young people are saying it even more loudly today: we don't need your permission to resist.
I call this disenfranchised activism, a disenfranchisement not only from formal politics but from the organisations that claim to represent dissent.
They may not join your NGO, party or union. They may never read your strategy or call themselves activists.
But when something touches their dignity, land, children or future, they organise, through social media, neighbourhoods, universities, workplaces and Indigenous networks, or simply because one person says "enough" and thousands recognise their own anger.
To professional civil society this looks chaotic. Perhaps the chaos carries a message: we don't believe in you anymore. Stop asking "Who are these people?" and ask "Why don't they trust us?"
Do not give the collapsing order another breath The post-war international order faces a profound crisis of legitimacy.
But a system in crisis does not necessarily surrender. It adapts. It recruits its critics, funds the opposition it can accommodate and learns the language of its challengers.
Suddenly everyone speaks of sustainability, resilience, inclusion, decolonisation, Indigenous wisdom, Ubuntu and climate justice.
But has the ownership changed?
The land, economic power, technology, military power, decision-making? Or only the vocabulary? To international organisations: disclose your agenda You are welcome to stand in solidarity, share knowledge and build relationships.
But don't pretend you have no agenda. Everybody does, so disclose yours. Who invited you? Who funds you?
How much did you raise for this programme, and what did you promise your donors? What share reaches communities, and what stays in salaries, offices, consultants, flights and fundraising?
Who designed the programme, chose the indicators and defined success? Who owns the photographs, the stories, the data?
When you leave, what remains? I have watched NGOs from the US and Europe arrive with programmes designed elsewhere.
They consult, photograph, collect testimonies and tick the gender, youth, Indigenous and climate boxes.
The boxes become reports, the reports become fundraising, and the suffering becomes a narrative. Communities too often never learn how much was raised in their name.
Our poverty is not your fundraising asset.
Our suffering is not your marketing material. Our Indigenous knowledge is not your intellectual property. Our children are not photographs for your annual report.
If you raise money in a community's name, publish the amount and show them the accounts.
If you photograph people, tell them where the images will appear. If you collect their knowledge, recognise their ownership.
That is partnership. Everything else is extraction in the clothes of solidarity.
Ticking boxes is not transformation
We have become extraordinarily good at ticking boxes: gender mainstreaming, stakeholder consultation, capacity building, donor report submitted, funding renewed.
But outside the conference room, has power moved? Has inequality declined?
Has the worker gained bargaining power, the woman economic independence, the young person a future? Has the river become cleaner? If not, what have we achieved?
Embedded deeply enough in the machinery of governments, foundations and multilateral institutions, civil society can stop being an instrument of transformation and become an obstacle to it.
A professionalised layer grows between communities and power. It speaks, negotiates, raises money and writes reports in people's name, until the people themselves disappear.
That is not empowerment.
It is intermediation, and at its worst, gatekeeping. Come to the Platinum Belt Let us test this where I live. South Africa's Platinum Belt sits on some of the greatest mineral wealth on Earth.
Substantial resources have supposedly flowed through Social and Labour Plans, corporate social investment, enterprise development, community trusts and local procurement.
Where did the money go?
Company by company, mine by mine, rand by rand. What was promised and what was spent? Who received it, who administered it, which consultants and NGOs were paid? How many sustainable enterprises and permanent jobs remain?
And what do the communities say happened? So here is my invitation. Let mining companies, government, municipalities, NGOs, foundations, unions, traditional leaders and international organisations come.
But don't bring PowerPoints. Bring the books: budgets, audited expenditure, Social and Labour Plans, contracts, beneficiary lists, procurement records. International NGOs, bring your donor agreements too.
Tell us what you raised in our name, what you spent here and what stayed in your headquarters. Then sit before the communities, not before donors, consultants or bureaucrats.
The people own resistance Civil society does not own resistance.
Neither do foundations, NGOs, parties or unions. The people do. Sometimes the role of established civil society is not to lead but to listen: to provide resources without controlling, share knowledge without dominating, amplify voices without appropriating them, and sometimes simply to get out of the way.
My challenge as an elder I am not calling for the destruction of civil society. I am calling for its liberation.
Recover your purpose. Ask the hardest question: Are the people more powerful because we exist? Not how large we are, how much we raised or how many COPs we attended.
Come out of the conference halls. Sit beneath a tree if necessary. Explain your funding, agenda, compromises, achievements and failures. Then listen.
The revolutions of the future may have no headquarters. Their leaders may have no titles, and their activists may never become professionals.
Do not domesticate them or turn their anger into another project. And for God's sake, do not ask who funds them before you ask why they are angry.
The old order is searching for an offramp, for new language, partners and legitimacy. Do not give it yours. Stop being wallflowers at the banquet of power. Stop ticking boxes. Bring the books. Disclose the agenda.
Stand before the people. Answer the questions. Because your legitimacy does not come from the people who fund you. It comes from the people you claim to serve.
Jay Naidoo is the founding General Secretary of COSATU, a former minister in Nelson Mandela’s Cabinet, a South African citizen and an elder
Naidoo's views do not reflect those of IOL or post.co.za