Page 18 - A Widening Idea of Health and Health Research - The South African Medical Research Council from Creation to COVID

Chapter Two Aanmatiging(Self-Assertion): The MRC, 1969–1985

Aanmatiging (Self-Assertion):
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The MRC, 1969–1985

f it took the new MRC a relatively short time after its creation in 1969 to resolve
the question of its physical location, it took it longer to be generally accepted
Ias South Africa’s premier organ of medical research. Not that this was for lack
of self-assertion on its part. Publicly, its first annual report boldly proclaimed that,
in terms of its founding Act, it took charge ‘of all matters affecting medical, dental
and related biological and physical research’ assigned to it by the Minister of Health,
whom it would also advise on the correct use and co-ordination of such research.
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Moreover, in the press it did not hesitate to describe itself as ‘nationally responsible for
medical research in South Africa in terms of an Act of Parliament’ and as ‘responsible
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for medical research countrywide’. Pointedly, in 1976 it named its new campus in
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Parow ‘Medicina’ to emulate the CSIR’s all-encompassing ‘Scientia’ in Pretoria.
Against such sweeping claims, especially when they were backed by Prime Minister
Vorster and senior Cabinet ministers, those bodies which sought to share the crown
of medical research in South Africa, like the Department of Health itself, the South
African Institute for Medical Research (SAIMR), the country’s medical schools and
even the National Institute of Virology, were increasingly hard put to compete. Yet,
if this was the situation on paper, in reality it took the best part of the MRC’s first
decade and a half to have its claim to occupy the leading role in medical research in
South Africa recognized, particularly by the Department of Health. As late as 1979

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