Page 161 - 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

49 Interview with Dr Philip Onyebujoh, 20 October 2020.
50 MRC News, 32, 3 (April 2001), p. 10.
51 R. Dorrington, D. Bourne, D. Bradshaw, R. Laubscher and I. M. Timmaeus, The Impact of HIV/AIDS
on Adult Mortality in South Africa (MRC Technical Report, September 2001), p. 6.
52 Sowetan, 5 October 2001, p. 12.
53 Star, 27 September 2001, p. 1.
54 Cape Times, 22 March 2002, p. 1.
55 MRC, Strongroom A119, boxfile ‘DoH’: cited in M. W. Makgoba, ‘A Response to the Minister’s Letter,
Dated 17th September [2001]’, n.d.
56 The Star, 17 October 2001, p. 1.
57 Cape Times, 17 October 2001, p. 6.
58 MRC, Strongroom A119, boxfile ‘HIV/AIDS’: Address by M. W. Makgoba, ‘Contextualising the MRC
Technical Report on the Impact of HIV/AIDS on Adult Mortality in South Africa’, c. 2001.
59 Die Burger, 9 November 2001, p. 4.
60 The Star, 22 April 2002, p.12.
61 Cape Times, 2 September 2002, p. 8.
62 Cape Times, 24 April 2002, p. 11.
63 Interview with Professor Malegapuru Makgoba, 8 October 2002.
64 Interview with Professor Malegapuru Makgoba, 8 October 2002.
65 Cape Times, 2 September 2002, p. 8.
66 Business Day, 15 April 2002, p. 1.
67 M. Gevisser, Thabo Mbeki: The Dream Deferred (Jonathan Ball, Johannesburg and Cape Town, 2007), p.
736; Mail & Guardian, 19 April 2002.
68 ‘Castro Hlongwane, Caravans, Cats, Geese, Foot & Mouth and Statistics: HIV/AIDS and the Struggle
for the Humanisation of the African (2002)’, p. 24, https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Castro_Hlongwane,_
Caravans,_Cats,_Geese,_Foot_%26_Mouth_and_Statistics:_HIV/Aids_and_the_Struggle_for_the_
Humanisation_of_the_African. Note the explicit reference to MRC researchers as ‘public servants’ as
part of the back-and-forth over whether they were government employees or state employees.
69 Cape Times, 2 September 2002, p. 8.
70 Business Day, 15 April 2002, p. 1.
71 Mbeki largely maintained this silence in public for the next twenty years until, in the midst of the
Covid-19 pandemic in 2022, he gave a public address at UNISA (of which he was Chancellor) in which he
once again raised his earlier query as to how a virus like HIV could be the cause of a syndrome like AIDS.
In a swingeing critique of such an attempt to ‘resurrect discredited propositions on HIV and AIDS’,
the Academy of Science of South Africa sharply rejected such naive questioning as it ‘will certainly
fuel the latent stigma and denialism that health professionals, scientists, NGOs and civil society have
worked so hard to mitigate’. The SAMRC strongly endorsed this denunciation of Mbeki’s statement,
an endorsement which it readily posted on its own official website (https://www.samrc.ac.za/media-
release/statement-comments-former-president-thabo-mbeki-hiv-and-aids-delivered-unisa-wednesday).
72 Interview with Professor Malegapuru Makgoba, 8 October 2020.
73 Email from Professor Malegapuru Makgoba to author, 15 February 2023.
74 MRC, Strongroom A119, boxfile ‘Staff Matters’, subfile ‘Scientists’: Scientist Meeting with the President,
Professor Pick, 5 November 2002, ‘Pretoria MRC Science Community: Questions and Concerns; The
Philosophy of the MRC’, p. 4.
75 Academy of Science of South Africa, Legends of South African Science (ASSAF, 2017), p. 129, https://
research.assaf.org.za/bitstream/handle/20.500.11911/74/MALEGAPURU%20WILLIAM%20
MAKGOBA.PDF.
76 Cape Argus, 24 October 2006, p. 4.

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