Page 105 - A Widening Idea of Health and Health Research - The South African Medical Research Council from Creation to COVID

A Widening Idea of Health: The SAMRC from Creation to Covid

malaise and dysfunction’, which, one vexed unit director complained, are ‘preventing
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us from doing our jobs’ – the administrative system was comprehensively revamped
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under the eye of a new Project Management Office. Delicately, the Human Resources
Department announced in 2014 that ‘change management has played a key role in
managing the impact of the revitalisation process’.
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While this may have been true in those sections of the MRC not directly affected
by the revitalization programme, for the 96 staff (out of a total of 709) served with
retrenchment notices it was a very different matter. With support from their trade
unions, some openly showed their opposition by demonstrating and toyi-toyiing on the
campus or even threatening Karim personally; others tried to have the retrenchment
policy reversed by lobbying MPs, the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and
Arbitration (CCMA), or individual members of the Board, prompting the chair to
warn that ‘the Board and the President will speak with one voice on the revitalisation
process’. If a Board member disagreed with the policy, this could be minuted, but ‘the
Board member remains bound by the decision of the Board’. 17
In the event, a few of the 96 were able to find similar positions in other MRC units;
37 others took voluntary severance packages; while the rest were formally retrenched
after hearings before the CCMA, all of which ended in favour of the MRC. With
obvious relief, the Board congratulated Karim on this outcome. He had striven, it said,
to make the MRC ‘a bastion of excellence through decisive decision making and the
elimination of indolence and mediocrity’. 18
Not surprisingly, those at the receiving end of revitalization did not agree. To an
American colleague, Karim portrayed them as feeling ‘some degree of entitlement
[though] … not doing first-rate research’. ‘Being redeployed to another unit and …
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[having to] get used to the environment and go back where an employee started 20 or
30 years ago is very demoralising’, sighed one. ‘No consideration has been taken of all
the skills and experiencial [sic] learning by your line manager to give an opportunity.’
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Another bemoaned the loss of ‘great scientists’ when ‘the clock [of revitalization]
struck … No one tried to retained [sic] them.’ An employee survey in 2015 revealed
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that among those still on the staff, ‘eroded employee morale due to recent revitalisation’
was widespread. The whole process had been ‘a traumatic experience’, reflected one
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discarded unit director with anguish. 23
Glenda Gray, who succeeded Karim as president in 2014, may have felt that
revitalization marked ‘the end of an era’, but it is clear that, at the same time, it was
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decisive in remodelling the MRC to produce what its annual report called ‘a rebirth’.
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In the words of a long-serving insider, Karim almost single-handedly ‘set the course’
for the MRC going forward.
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