About

The Health Justice Initiative (HJI) is a South African non-profit organisation working to address systemic health inequities and injustices in South Africa and beyond. Founded in mid-2020 in response to the massive inequalities in public health exposed and exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, HJI also focuses on the intersections between health justice, racial and gender inequity, and climate injustice, while continuing to work directly on issues of health policy.

Our story

The Health Justice Initiative (HJI) uses law, research, and advocacy tools to understand, challenge and address the factors that shape inequity in health access, especially in relation to accessing life-saving medicines for key diseases. We work to ensure that we have a fair, transparent, accountable and equitable health system in a country and world riddled with systemic exclusion and inequity.

The HJI has a strong and committed staff team, Board and Reference Advisory Group, whose members have longstanding expertise in, inter alia: law, public health, medicine, economics, scientific research, policy development, activism, and community engagement. The HJI Board and the Reference Advisory Group guide the organisation’s strategic focus areas and partnerships. Our Vision is to create a more inclusive and equitable public health system.

STAFF

Fatima Hassan

Founder / Director

About Fatima

Fatima is a human rights lawyer and social justice activist. She is the founder of the Health Justice Initiative (HJI). Among others, she is the recipient of the 2022 Calgary Peace Prize and is a 2023 Echoing Green Fellow.

She has dedicated her professional life to defending and promoting human rights in South Africa, especially in the health field. She holds a BA and LL.B from the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) and an LL.M from Duke University. She clerked at the Constitutional Court of South Africa; served as Ministerial Advisor in two portfolios; and headed the Open Society Foundations in SA for 6 years. She has previously served on several NGO and other Boards, and currently serves on the Advisory Group for Resolve to Save Lives and the University of Washington’s Department of Global Health Partner Advisory Board. She is an Honorary Research Associate at the UCT School of Public Health & Family Medicine.

Althea Adonis

Project Administrator / Coordinator

About Althea

With over 20 years of experience in the administrative field, Althea is the Administration Manager at HJI. She graduated with a degree in Business Administration from the University of the Western Cape. She is fervently dedicated to the causes of health justice and disability rights.

BOARD

Shuaib Manjra

Chairperson

About Shuaib

Noncedo Madubedube

Deputy Chairperson

About Noncedo

Noncedo Madubedube is a queer, black woman of Marxist-Feminist traditions. She is a trained pedagogist (majoring in Mathematics and Languages) and a Social Justice activist. She is the current General Secretary of Equal Education, a youth-led social movement focusing on the right to education in South Africa. She currently serves on the board of the Health Justice Initiative and the Reading Panel 2030. Noncedo has more than 15 years of experience in organising, popular education development, coalition building, global solidarity and international advocacy work. She is interested and invested in being part of spaces that cultivate an imagination for radical ideas that build, connect and sustain people’s movements and key moments.

Reference Advisory group

Professor Leslie London

Chair of Public Health Medicine in the UCT School of Public Health

About Leslie

Professor Leslie London is Chair of Public Health Medicine in the School of Public Health and Family Medicine at the University of Cape Town. He served as Head of School from 2007 to 2012. He heads the Division of Public Health Medicine and is an active in the Centre for Occupational and Environmental Health Research, in which he leads research in the areas of pesticide hazards and chemical neurotoxicity, farm worker occupational health, and occupational and environmental epidemiology. He also leads the School’s Health and Human Rights Programme which has a broad research and training mandate addressing health as a socio-economic right and examining human rights and ethical issues in relation to the practice of occupational health professionals, including dual loyalty at the workplace. He has served on many committees dealing with ethics and human rights in research and professional contexts, has provided advice to the AIDS Law Project in test cases related to workplace discrimination involving HIV and is active in the People’s Health Movement South Africa.

Professor Francois Venter

Head: EZINTHSA

About Francois

Professor WD Francois Venter, MD, FCP, PhD is Executive Director of Wits Ezintsha at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, where he received most of his training. His work involves health systems research and clinical trials, most recently involving the antiretrovirals dolutegravir, tenofovir alafenamide, cabotegravir, and doravirine. He leads multiple antiretroviral treatment optimisation studies and is currently working on new access programmes through private pharmacies within South Africa, patient linkage-to-care interventions, self-testing projects, as well as most recently on new large-scale primary care delivery platforms addressing hypertension, diabetes, obesity, hyperlipidaemia and HIV. He has led large PEPFAR-funded HIV programmes in South Africa, focusing on men, women, children, young people, truckers, sex workers, and LGBTI communities. For over 20 years he has been an advisor to bodies such as the South African government, UNAIDS, and WHO, contributing to international, regional, and national HIV guidelines, and recently served as a member of the Ministerial Advisory Committee for COVID-19. He has an active interest in medical ethics and has been involved in several HIV-related human rights cases within the southern African region. He supervises post-grad students and has over 280 publications, including first-author articles in major journals.

Phumi Mtetwa

Regional Co-Director: JASS Southern Africa

About Phumi

Phumi is an activist working on issues of economic, gender and LGBTI equality and justice. She has a wealth of experience having worked in international and regional contexts particularly, Southern Africa and Ecuador. Phumi began her political life in 1985, her work included organising rent boycotts to combat Apartheid and mobilising against the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas. She was part of a group of activists that worked to enshrine the rights to equality, dignity, and freedom for all in the South African Constitution. As a former Co-Secretary General of the International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA) she contributed in bringing issues of concern in the global South to the organisation, including creating the LGBT South-South Dialogue, that strongly contributed LGBTI perspectives in the processes of the World Social Forum (WSF). She has been part of the leadership of many organisations, including the AIDS Law Project, TAC, FEDAEPS, the Lesbian and Gay Equality Project; is a co-founding member of the Masithandane End-Hate Collective. She is also Social Change Initiative Fellow (SCI).

Phumeza Mlungwana

Senior Programme Officer: IBP-SA

About Phumeza

Phumeza is a social justice activist and currently works as a Senior Programme Officer with the International Budget Partnership (IBP) South Africa. She is also completing an MPhil degree in Criminology, Law and Society at the University of Cape Town (UCT). She completed her undergraduate studies and received her honours at the University of the Western Cape (UWC). She is the former General Secretary of the Social Justice Coalition (SJC) – a leading social movement in South Africa advocating for equality, safety, and justice in working class communities. Phumeza is also a recipient of the Open Society Foundations 25th Commemorative Scholarships (awarded to 25 young scholars in SA) and is a Fellow with the Social Change Initiative (SCI). She is a co-author of ‘Fragments of Activism’. She is a trustee of both Ndifuna Ukwazi and the Khayelitsha Youth Community Centre Trust.

Associate Prof. Tracey Naledi

Deputy Dean: UCT Faculty of Health Sciences

About Tracey

Tracey Naledi is an Associate Professor of Public Health Medicine and the Deputy Dean: Social Accountability and Health Systems at the Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Cape Town. Tracey has held technical & management positions in Government and NGO sectors in South Africa and Botswana. Her work includes the translation of research into policy and practice, addressing health inequity and strengthening systems for health. Tracey is the Founding Chairperson of Tekano, Atlantic Fellows for Health Equity in South Africa, Chairperson of SHAWCO and the Children’s Institute, a Board Member of the Global Brain Health Institute and the South African Medical Research Council. Tracey is a Discovery Foundation Fellow and the Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation Fellow.

Doctor Els Torreele

Medical Innovation and Access Activist

About Els

Dr Els Torreele is a health and medical innovation expert, working to reform the global pharmaceutical R&D and manufacturing ecosystem to prioritize people’s health needs and ensure equitable access to knowledge and technologies. A Bio-Engineer and PhD from Brussels University, for over 20 years she combined medical research, pharmaceutical R&D, policy analysis and research, and advocacy at Brussels University, Médecins Sans Frontières, Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative, and Open Society Foundations, including in senior leadership positions. Since 2020, she is independent researcher and advisor, including working with global health and justice advocates such as Rt. Hon. Helen Clark and other members of the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response, and with the WHO Council on the Economics of Health for All. She’s author on over 50 international journal publications (eg The Lancet, BMJ, Nature, Vaccines), and a regular contributor to the scientific and societal debate around medical innovation and equitable access through international conferences, media and social media.

Doctor François Bonnici

Director: Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship

About François

Professor François Bonnici is a physician, professor, author and current Director of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship. He is the former Founding Director of the Bertha Centre for Social Innovation & Entrepreneurship at the University of Cape Town (UCT), the first academic centre dedicated to social innovation in Africa. His experience spans over two decades of working across multiple systems, sectors, and scales, deeply rooted in context and frontline work, while also working extensively with public sector, multilaterals, civil society, and business in progressive and catalytic partnerships. His book, together with Cynthia Rayner, “The Systems Work of Social Change: How to Harness Connection, Context and Power to Cultivate Deep and Enduring Change” was awarded Best Non-Profit Management Book of 2022. He is a Visiting Fellow at the Skoll Centre at the University of Oxford, Academic Fellow at the Geneva Centre for Philanthropy at the University of Geneva and has been recognised as a Rhodes Scholar, an Archbishop Tutu African Leadership Fellow and serves as founding Governing Council member of Catalyst 2030.

Donors HJI relies on the generous support of individual donors and partner organisations to fund our work. We gratefully acknowledge current support from the following organisational funders.

Current Funders

Current Funders
Past Funders

Echoing Green
The Joffe Charitable Trust
Claude Leon Foundation

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