A Medical Activist

Author, medic and sexual health activist Dr Tlaleng Mofokeng on the importance of leaning on others for help and how she stumbled upon her unique career path

- Kemong Mopedi

I meet Dr. Tlaleng Mofokeng, or Dr. T as she’s popularly known, while she’s in the midst of settling into her new office at the Commission for Gender Equality (CGE) at the Constitution Hill in Braamfontein. The book, Medical Apartheid, by Harriet A. Washington, catches my eye amidst the piles of boxes — something I process to mean that this is no conventional medic. In fact, she is the epitome of how the world always, eventually, embraces those who show conformity to the middle finger.

As a child, toy shopping sprees for Dr. T would always end up in her buying first aid material — from bandages to medication. “And whenever there was a minor medical emergency in our street, people would always say, ‘Ask for help at Tlaleng’s house, she has a medical kit’. I knew that I’d be a doctor even before I knew that my passions could be captured with the word ‘doctor’,” the Qwa Qwaborn and raised medic enthuses.

HOW I GOT HERE

Activism has always been an integral part of Dr. T’s life. In high school, there was always an issue that she was at the forefront of protesting about — be it advocating for girls to wear pants or braid their hair, she shares. “I started reading medical non-fiction, instead of romance novels, early on and that informed some of the insights that I would later hold as a teen and young adult. Something in me always refused to accept the order of things,” Dr. T says.