Page 26 - A Widening Idea of Health and Health Research - The South African Medical Research Council from Creation to COVID

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

the Department of Health, with Afrikaners always outnumbering English-speakers.
In 1980 an Indian professor of medicine from the University of Natal Medical School
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joined the Council, to be followed seven years later by the first woman, an Indian
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colleague of his from the same institution. Also appointed in 1987 was the first African
to serve on the Council, a professor of anatomy from the Medical University of South
Africa. Beyond these, the racial, gender and professional composition of the Council
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changed little until after the inauguration of a democratic South Africa in 1994.
The Council had two chief areas of responsibility, finance and the overall direction
of the research which the MRC funded. Thus, it had to pass the MRC’s annual
budget, watch over its implementation, and approve recommendations by its Grants
Committee as to which research applications should be successful. This made the
committee of decisive importance in determining the thrust of medical research in
South Africa. Not surprisingly, Brink kept it firmly under his thumb.
As the MRC was a parastatal body, its funding – at least until South Africa lost its
pariah status internationally in the 1990s – came largely via a grant by Parliament,
which meant that, from day one, it was always sensitive to the central government’s
policies and priorities and was reluctant to ignore them. This funding aside, the only
other sources of significant funds until the 1990s were payment by state bodies for
specialized medical investigations and donations. Together, these generated about 10–
15 per cent of its annual income in these years.
In terms of the disbursement of this income, just over half was allocated to the
MRC’s own in-house research or service institutes, about a quarter to research units
or groups located chiefly at universities, and the rest to its general administration and
operation. Such an uneven allocation caused much unhappiness in the universities but
was very much a reflection of the MRC’s priorities in this setting-up phase of its history,
in which it believed that its internal institutes had to be equipped and built up speedily.
The relative percentage of the MRC’s research funding, which went to research
units or groups at universities (see Table 1) is equally telling of the MRC’s priorities
in these foundational years.
As much as Brink might have claimed that it was the MRC’s aim ‘to ensure that
research becomes an integral part of [the overall] academic function’, it is clear that
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his home university, the University of Stellenbosch, benefited disproportionately from
the MRC’s largesse, despite its then still-emerging research character. It was whispered
behind the scenes that the MRC was really ‘the University of Stellenbosch’s MRC’,
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while more openly the MRC was said to have ‘really got Stellenbosch University to
be more research orientated’. Similar advantaging was probably true of the other
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Afrikaans-medium universities on the list. On the other hand, the absence from the

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