UN special rapporteur, doctor, author and activist Dr Tlaleng Mofokeng has given her life in service to restoring the dignity of those who don’t know their rights, and those who need their rights affirmed.
“I am guided by the ultimate goal of restoration of dignity. We all want to live dignified lives but so much has gone wrong along the way,” she said.
“We cannot provide health care and ignore the element of rights attached to it. Currently, health information doesn’t tell people what their rights are. The system is set up in such a way that even if you know your rights, it’s very difficult to advocate for them as an individual patient. We can’t expect individuals to fight a system.”
Mofokeng has been listed as one of BBC’s 100 inspiring and influential women from around the world in 2021. She said the honour was affirming and timely.
“The work I do on defending human rights and particularly the right to health often speaks on very polarising issues like abortion and LBTQIA+,” she said.
“The context of my work is so political and we are constantly being attacked. Getting this recognition is for more than just me. It’s for black women who are not ordinarily given the authority and space to be independent experts.
“This invigorates the movement beyond what I am doing as a person.”
As an advocate for sexual and reproductive health rights, Mofokeng has contributed to normalising conversations surrounding these. Mofokeng said they are human rights issues, intrinsically and fundamentally.
“We are born and we are human, and the idea that we even have to fight for it is a warped idea,” she said.
“The rights to autonomy, bodily integrity and dignity shouldn’t be a fight, but they are; because we are living in a society where people are hell-bent on ensuring we don’t realise those rights.”
In all of her roles, she’s always made an effort as a human rights defender to make it known that people are not powerless or voiceless.
“The systems that racialised us and put a hierarchy into humanity means that some are seen and heard and others are not,” she said. “That directly impacts their humanity and how they are treated in society and within the health-care system itself.”
Mofokeng, who graduated from the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal in 2007, said she always knew that traditional forms of medicine were not for her.
“I realised early on through my experiences as a young medical intern how the health system doesn’t pay enough attention to human rights and underlying determinants of health. Emotional well-being is also part of disease management.”
Her interest in sexual and reproductive health rights was sparked through her time working as a community service doctor in West Rand.
“I saw many young people desperate for information. To go to a clinic, you need to have an ailment. There aren’t spaces where you can go to ask about consent and contraceptives or intimate partner violence.”
Mofokeng said there is so much more that health-care workers can do in a consultation, to affirm the patient and create a safer space for them.
“We have to look at the practice of medicine itself as a tool for the protection of human rights. There’s so much more than diagnosing and treating the disease.”
In 2019, she published her book Dr T: A Guide to Sexual Health and Pleasure, as an aid to assist those in need.
“We need to make sure that not only do we speak to patients, but that we give them information that is accessible to them too.”
Mofokeng said the way in which people can take better care of their sexual and reproductive health is by having a system that sees women as people with full agency.
“The rights we have in our constitution and human rights need to become tangible. We need to find innovative and decisive leaders who understand human rights and understand how to operationalise them.”