“No One Is Coming to Save Us”: Queer Africans Claim Their Power at We The 99 People’s Summit

As the world’s most powerful economies prepare to gather behind high-security walls at the G20 Summit in Johannesburg, a very different kind of gathering is taking shape just 10 kilometres away at Constitution Hill.

From 20–22 November, the We The 99 People’s Summit for Global Economic Justice will bring together grassroots movements, workers, artists, activists, and youth from across Africa and the Global South to present bold people-centred alternatives to a global economic system they argue is “rigged in favour of elites and billionaires.”

Among the voices shaping this counter-summit is queer governance and climate justice advocate Sekoetlane Phamodi, who insists that queer Africans cannot afford to sit out the struggle for economic and climate justice, because they are already among the hardest hit.

“We are currently at a crossroads,” Phamodi tells MambaOnline, “where the economy we have, which is already causing serious insecurity for so many people, is being further destabilised by climate change.”

South Africa, they note, is a climate hotspot facing rising heat, desertification, drying water systems, and escalating food prices. But for queer Africans, the crisis carries an additional and often deadly dimension.

“We are especially vulnerable to scapegoating and social violence,” they explain, “which is why we have to look beyond organising only on the basis of our sexual and gender identities, and start playing a more direct role in organising for social and economic justice.”

A Summit for Those Most Impacted, Including Queer Communities

The People’s Summit positions itself as a direct counterpoint to the G20’s elite-driven economic agenda. As movements from DRC, Kenya, South Africa, and beyond converge, Phamodi stresses that queer people must claim space within this struggle, not as tokens, but as protagonists.

They point to the ways imperialism and global economic policies repeatedly make queer Africans collateral damage. “Imperialism doesn’t only look like countries invading each other,” they say. “It looks like large multinational corporations… coercing governments to monopolise industries, cut jobs, dodge taxes and exploit our resources.”

Recent controversies, such as Amazon’s withdrawal from Johannesburg Pride amid global criticism of its involvement in human rights abuses, illustrate, they add, how corporate pinkwashing masks deeper patterns of exploitation. Meanwhile, anti-LBGTQIA crackdowns in Uganda, Nigeria, and Ghana are, they argue, “direct responses to the consistent use of LGBTQIA rights as political leverage by imperialist forces.”

The result? Queer people become targets, not only of discriminatory laws, but of the economic violence those laws help justify.

“No-One Is Coming to Save Us”

The Summit’s aim is clear: to create a living alternative where those who endure inequality, debt, land dispossession, state violence, and environmental devastation can articulate solutions grounded not in elite interests, but in lived reality.

For queer Africans, Phamodi believes this moment is urgent.

“We have comrades from DRC where queer people are victims of designed political instability and genocide that enables the plundering of mineral resources,” they note. “We have comrades from Kenya where queer youth protestors were shot and killed for resisting IMF-driven taxation that destroys their futures.”

Silence, they warn, will not protect anyone. “We are now at a point where we have to be serious about getting involved in political activism that looks beyond political parties and starts to construct clear political alternatives that reflect us and our aspirations for the future. No-one is coming to save us.”

Corruption, Capture, and the Cost to Queer Lives

Phamodi, who has worked extensively in areas of governance and anti-corruption, draws a straight line between elite-driven state capture and the everyday hardships faced by marginalised communities.

“Corruption is not just a few bad apples,” they say. “It is systemic… The system is rigged against us.”

Multinational consultancies like KPMG and BAIN, they argue, were as central to South Africa’s state capture crisis as the Guptas. Privatising the state, a solution often pushed by the same elites, has only worsened inequality, climate vulnerability, and social collapse.

For queer people already navigating unemployment, precarious housing, poor health access, and social stigma, corruption amplifies every barrier to safety and dignity.

Building Queer Power Within the 99%

At Constitution Hill, the Summit aims to cultivate exactly the kind of politicisation and solidarity Phamodi credits for shaping their own activism.

Raised in the women’s movement, they say it armed them not just with courage but with the ability to analyse, understand, and fight the systems limiting queer lives. The Summit, they believe, is part of building a new generation of globally connected queer and working-class leadership.

“We have so much to learn and offer each other that will go a long way toward building the unity and power of the 99%,” they say. “We have to reclaim the state… and turn the tables on those who play games with our lives.”

A Festival of Resistance and Reimagining

The three-day Summit will culminate in The 99% Uprising Festival on 22 November, featuring DBN Gogo, Maglera Doe Boy, The Brother Moves On, Lebo Mashile, and iPhupho L’ka Biko, all free for registered attendees.

Organisers describe the festival as a celebration of collective resistance, where art and activism meet to imagine a future free of austerity, exploitation, and environmental destruction.

As Phamodi reminds us, queer Africans are central to that future, not because they are victims, but because they have always been part of Africa’s radical, liberatory imagination.