Rights, Accountability and Active Citizenship | Prof Tshepo Madlingozi on the South African Human Rights Commission
Loading player...
South Africa is 30 years into constitutional democracy - but how well are those rights actually being protected? Prof Tshepo Madlingozi, Commissioner at the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) and scholar-activist with two decades of university teaching and grassroots engagement, joins Dr Katlego Letlonkane on SiyakhulaLive to examine the Commission as a living instrument of justice, accountability, and civic participation.
Prof Madlingozi brings a distinctive lens: for over 20 years he has worked simultaneously in academia and activism, including nearly two decades with the Khulumani Support Group, a social movement representing victims of apartheid. That dual identity - rigorous legal scholar and committed public intellectual — shapes his understanding of what human rights work requires in practice.
The conversation maps the SAHRC's three-part mandate (promotion, protection, and monitoring), names the human rights challenges generating the most complaints - access to water, healthcare, and housing account for roughly 60% of cases - and confronts the structural realities of a country where geography, class, and race still determine whether rights are lived or theoretical.
Prof Madlingozi also makes the case for an Ubuntu-rooted conception of active citizenship: one that refuses the privatisation of life and insists that rights cannot be separated from shared responsibility.
What we cover in this episode:
- The SAHRC as a Chapter 9 institution: What independent constitutional institutions are designed to do, and why the drafters of South Africa's Constitution created them as intermediaries between state and civil society.
- Three tools of the Commission: How the SAHRC uses promotion, monitoring, and protection to fulfil its mandate - and how these functions reinforce one another in practice.
- The complaints picture: What the 6 000 complaints received annually reveal about persistent inequality, service delivery failure, racial discrimination, and institutional dysfunction.
- Intersectional vulnerability: How overlapping categories of race, class, gender, and sexuality shape who bears the heaviest cost when rights are not realised.
- Active citizenship and Ubuntu: Why knowing your rights is only the beginning - and what the Commission's "Rights and Responsibilities" campaign asks of every South African.
How to reach the SAHRC: How individuals can submit complaints and access justice through the Commission's provincial offices, WhatsApp, website, and social media platforms.
Stream MFM 92.6: www.mfm.co.za
Follow us on socials: @mfm926
Prof Madlingozi brings a distinctive lens: for over 20 years he has worked simultaneously in academia and activism, including nearly two decades with the Khulumani Support Group, a social movement representing victims of apartheid. That dual identity - rigorous legal scholar and committed public intellectual — shapes his understanding of what human rights work requires in practice.
The conversation maps the SAHRC's three-part mandate (promotion, protection, and monitoring), names the human rights challenges generating the most complaints - access to water, healthcare, and housing account for roughly 60% of cases - and confronts the structural realities of a country where geography, class, and race still determine whether rights are lived or theoretical.
Prof Madlingozi also makes the case for an Ubuntu-rooted conception of active citizenship: one that refuses the privatisation of life and insists that rights cannot be separated from shared responsibility.
What we cover in this episode:
- The SAHRC as a Chapter 9 institution: What independent constitutional institutions are designed to do, and why the drafters of South Africa's Constitution created them as intermediaries between state and civil society.
- Three tools of the Commission: How the SAHRC uses promotion, monitoring, and protection to fulfil its mandate - and how these functions reinforce one another in practice.
- The complaints picture: What the 6 000 complaints received annually reveal about persistent inequality, service delivery failure, racial discrimination, and institutional dysfunction.
- Intersectional vulnerability: How overlapping categories of race, class, gender, and sexuality shape who bears the heaviest cost when rights are not realised.
- Active citizenship and Ubuntu: Why knowing your rights is only the beginning - and what the Commission's "Rights and Responsibilities" campaign asks of every South African.
How to reach the SAHRC: How individuals can submit complaints and access justice through the Commission's provincial offices, WhatsApp, website, and social media platforms.
Stream MFM 92.6: www.mfm.co.za
Follow us on socials: @mfm926
