Healthcare a basic human right that needs championing

As a proud South African Jewish member of the Gauteng Provincial Legislature and a former Member of Parliament, I am proud to be an outspoken voice of the community on issues that affect our lives on a day-to-day basis, especially in my first love, healthcare.

I have worked for the Democratic Alliance and its predecessors for 47 years, and am a passionate servant leader who tackles the hard topics others often choose to ignore. I’m championing the right to dignified healthcare in our broken healthcare system, manned by African National Congress (ANC) politicians who care more about contracts for pals and “tenderpreneurs” than offering quality healthcare to the millions of South Africans who don’t have the money for medical aid. Health is not a luxury, it’s a basic human right, and one the ANC abuses at will.

My other passion is addressing corruption in the mortuary and funeral industries, where the wrong bodies get sent to families for burial, while others are cremated in error because officials just don’t care or don’t do their jobs correctly. I have become a voice for the voiceless.

I also began a campaign in 2020 to rebuild the first shul built in Pretoria, the same one that heard the original Rivonia Trial. I am proud to say that recently, we were given the green light by the Democratic Alliance’s minister for public works and infrastructure, Dean Macpherson, to really sink our teeth into sourcing funding for a private-public partnership to resurrect this wonderful building. So, Glynnis Breytenbach and I will soon be knocking on a lot of doors with our hands outstretched. The project is going to cost a lot of money.

My greatest political achievement was being asked to speak at Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. in 2022 at the first in-person Global Taskforce Tackling Online Antisemitism. Sadly, since then, attacks on us as Jews have reached disproportionate heights, and I’m not even talking about 7 October 2023 and its aftermath. But we are a resilient people. Our strength lies in our ability to stand together, united and undaunted.

I am proud to stand on the right side of history.

• Madeleine Hicklin is a member of the Gauteng Provincial Legislature. She has BA Dramatic Art Degree from the University of the Witwatersrand, and worked as a journalist and health educator since 1984 when she wrote the first AIDS awareness brochures in the country. She is also the editor and business manager for the Association for Peri-Operative Practitioners of South Africa (APPSA) Journal as well as copy editor for eight nursing textbooks. She is a passionate advocate for human rights.