25/08/2026
I knew Russell through Triangle Project, where he served as Treasurer. He was only the second straight person to occupy that position, after Virginia Brookes, and the first man. Both were nominated by Mary Hames during her time as Chairperson.
There is an ode to Mary in this story too. She had an extraordinary ability to draw on her relationships and networks in service of q***r movement work. If she knew someone with knowledge, resources or access, she would ask how they might contribute.
Mary asked Russell, in all her le***an glory, to show up for a q***r organisation. He came because she asked but, importantly, he stayed long after she had left.
Russell’s place among us was not uncomplicated. He was a straight man carrying responsibility within a q***r organisation. Showing up did not automatically make him part of our q***r world, with all its particular histories, intimacies and exclusions. Yet neither was he simply outside it. He occupied that difficult space of solidarity: close enough to carry responsibility, while recognising that proximity is not the same as belonging.
I think he sometimes struggled to find his place among the rest of us on the Board. It was not for lack of trying. Perhaps there were moments when he did not fully understand us, and moments when we did not know how to make room for him without losing boundaries that mattered.
As Treasurer, he also worked at the uneasy meeting point between political imagination and financial constraint between what justice asks of us and what the balance sheet says is possible. His broader work away from Triangle Project seemed to carry related questions: How can money serve communities rather than simply accumulate around individuals? How do we use what we have in service of something larger?
I am deeply saddened that he died so young and left behind a young family. I cannot know what this loss means for those who loved him most closely, or what his absence will ask of them in the days and years ahead. I can only say that he mattered to us too.
Hy was ’n groothartmens. That is how I will remember him.
Elsbeth Engelbrecht, Triangle Project Director (2015–2025)
