Page 110 - A Widening Idea of Health and Health Research - The South African Medical Research Council from Creation to COVID

Slimmer, but Not Lacking Gray Matter: The MRC, 2012–2021

Table 2: Racial and gender composition of staff employed by the MRC

Year Total Staff % White % Black % Male % Female

1989 ? 78 22 ? ?
1999 430 55 45 37 63
2009 883 11 89 31 69
2019 639 12 88 30.7 69.3

Sources: MRC Strategic Plan 1999–2002 (MRC, 1998?), p. 2; Sunday Times, 28 March 1999, p. 97; MRC,
AR 2009–2010, p. 5; MRC, AR 2019, p. 189; SAMRC, Bophelo Report (MRC, 2019), p. 20.

These changes in the size and composition of the MRC’s staff complement over the last
thirty years of course reflect deeper changes in the country after 1994 at the initiative
of the Government: the surge in the number of employees – almost half of them on
contract – during the post-1994 first rebirth of the MRC, followed by a precipitous
downscaling as a result of the revitalization programme, and then a slow recovery dating
from its second rebirth; the dramatic increase in the percentage of black employees
after 1994, especially of Africans, with a corresponding plummeting in the number
of white staff both absolutely and relatively; and a less prodigious increase in the
percentage of black women employees, especially in administrative positions. Glenda
Gray apart, a handful of women were appointed as senior managers and research unit
directors by 2020, in part thanks to Gray’s facilitation. ‘I was worried about the leakage
from the pipeline’, she explained when introducing mid-career research grants mainly
for women to become independent researchers in their own right. ‘There are lots of
young women who start in science and in the end there are very few.’ The grant would
‘support their growth as leaders … A little bit of money and support can leapfrog
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you … This award carries stature and opens doors.’ With a similar intention, from
2014 applicants for the MRC’s Self-Initiated Research Grants, established in 2004,
were divided into two categories, established and early-career researchers, with grants
favouring the latter. As a result, the percentage of black recipients grew markedly
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from 27 per cent in 2012 to 42 per cent in 2016 and to 58 per cent in 2020.
By 2022 such corrective action (including the appointment to the Executive
Management Committee of a dedicated executive director for transformation) had
brought closer the goal sketched by the chair of the MRC’s Board in 2017, namely
‘a diverse workforce … [which] is paramount to an organisation reflective of our
country’. 46
By then too several of the sources of dissension within the MRC which Karim

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