Page 144 - A Widening Idea of Health and Health Research - The South African Medical Research Council from Creation to COVID

Stress Test: The MRC and the Covid-19 Pandemic, 2020–

removal … calculated to shame and intimidate the MRC President’.
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Complaisant, the cowed MRC Board immediately distanced itself from Gray’s
criticisms, apologized for them, agreed to undertake the requested investigation to
determine ‘the damage done to the SAMRC and the national Covid-19 response as a
result of the comments made’, and barred Gray and MRC staff from speaking to the
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media. To the National Department of Health it extended ‘a heartfelt unconditional
apology … for any offence caused, and embarrassment suffered as a result of the
comments made by Prof Gray in the media’. Anxious to mend its fences with the
Department of Health, its chair sought a meeting with Mkhize and his acting director
general ‘at your earliest convenience to discuss further how this unfortunate situation
could be corrected speedily’. This was acting ‘in a sycophantic manner aimed at
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political appeasement’, lamented the guest editorial in the SAMJ. 24
The authors of this disparaging reproach in the SAMJ were only three of more
than three hundred scientists, academics and health professionals who rapidly came
out publicly in support of Gray’s right to speak as she had, a position wholeheartedly
echoed by the Academy of Science of South Africa and by a host of her staff at the
MRC. Quick to recognize the way the wind had turned against censuring its president,
the MRC Board did a U-turn and announced that its investigation had found Gray
had not breached any of its regulations or policies. Seeking to end the sharp war of
words, it now called on Gray, the MRC and Mkhize ‘to resolve the issue of statements
made in the media in the best interests of all parties and the nation’.
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From this contretemps Gray thus emerged with her public profile significantly
enhanced and with a positive reputation for fearlessly taking on what many saw as
irrational policies and policy-makers from a standpoint of sober medical science.
Thanks to her official position as its president, the MRC did too, though not its Board.
Having learnt in this way the difficulty of winning a debate in the public domain
with a well-informed and feisty critic who enjoyed the support of her profession, her
staff and many in the public and social media, the National Department of Health
was reluctant to open itself to such public criticism again, given the widespread state
of anxiety about Covid-19 in the country. Instead, it seems to have decided to take
advantage of Gray’s new-found status as a credible public intellectual who, with the
backing of a reputable scientific institution like the MRC, did not hesitate to speak her
mind frankly and independently. Her support, it recognized, would be invaluable for
public acceptance of any contentious policy decisions it might take.
Thus, in July 2020, her long-standing criticism of the closure of schools in the
face of the pandemic (which the MAC shared, though in private) made her the ideal
person in the Government’s eyes to urge their speedy reopening despite the doubts

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