Anger, Agency, and the Path Forward: A Conversation on Resistance

This dialogue emerges at a time of profound reckoning in global philanthropy and social justice work: grassroots movements demonstrate new forms of collective action and mutual aid that bypass traditional power structures entirely. The question is no longer whether change will come, but whether institutions can transform themselves to respond to compounding crises and the demand for authentic solidarity?

Emerging from our August conversation on “Confronting Contradictions in Philanthropy,” where we began exploring the tensions between institutional power and grassroots resistance, this dialogue turns to a more fundamental question: how should anger and rage, the raw emotions driving so much contemporary activism, be differentiated?

The conversation will explore the productive dimensions of  anger in social movements as well as the potentially destructive elements of rage.

📅 Date: December 2nd, 2025
⏰ Time: 2PM UK / 3PM CET / 4PM SAST / 9AM ET / 6AM PST
🔗 Register for the zoom link

This conversation will not shy away from difficult territory. Questions of complicity and resistance have become impossible to ignore, forcing those who work within established institutions to confront uncomfortable truths about their own role in perpetuating inequality. Questions emerging from our earlier conversation include: Can institutions be reformed from within, or must they be replaced entirely? What are the real costs of “speaking truth to power” versus working within existing systems? How do we honour the urgency of current crises while building for sustainable long-term change? What does authentic solidarity look like across vastly different contexts of oppression and privilege?

The dialogue aims to provide frameworks for thinking through how anger, properly understood and channelled, can serve liberation. It offers an opportunity to engage with someone who helped transform one of the world’s most entrenched systems of oppression while maintaining principles of  human dignity, alongside two individuals  who  actively challenge contemporary philanthropy to live up to its stated values.

For philanthropy specifically, this conversation addresses the creation and/or elevation of just alternatives despite the dominance of entrenched systems of privilege and power, what role institutional actors should play in that emergence and/or transformation and the role of individual and collective resistance within philanthropy in moving these agendas.  Whether you work within established institutions, grassroots movements, or the spaces between them, this dialogue provides tools for navigating current tensions while building toward more equitable futures

• Albie Sachs – Anti-apartheid veteran, former Constitutional Court Justice, author of “The Soft Vengeance of a Freedom Fighter”
• Naila Farouky – Director, Arab Foundations Forum
• Halima Mahomed – Independent Philanthropy Researcher and Consultant, Thiqa Consulting.

Albie Sachs brings the wisdom of decades spent fighting apartheid in South Africa, including his experience surviving an assassination attempt and his subsequent work on truth, reconciliation, and constitutional democracy. His journey from revolutionary to constitutional architect offers crucial perspective on transforming anger into constructive action while maintaining one’s humanity in the face of systematic oppression. His insights speak directly to contemporary activists and philanthropists grappling with the importance for social liberation movements of making a clear emotional and strategic choice   between anger, which is aimed at transformation of structures of oppression,  and rage, which is dedicated to obliteration of the enemy, and leads to endless war.

Naila Farouky represents a new generation of voices demanding fundamental transformation in how philanthropy operates, particularly in relation to Global South communities and the ongoing colonial dynamics that shape institutional giving. Her work challenges philanthropic institutions to confront their own complicity in the systems they claim to address, pushing beyond performative allyship toward genuine partnership and shared power.

Halima Mahomed brings to the fore the centrality of interrogating and addressing narratives, agency and privilege as fundamental to the philanthropic transformations that are necessary to advance a just society. Her work has challenged the limited and depoliticized notions of philanthropic transformation, emphasizing the importance of constituency organizing in agenda setting, and the political nature of the transformations, solidarity and resistance required – at personal and institutional levels.   

Moderated by Gerry Salole