Page 60 - A Widening Idea of Health and Health Research - The South African Medical Research Council from Creation to COVID

Chapter Four

Positively into the New South Africa:

The MRC, 1995–2012

Administration amidst transformation
n 19 December 1994, twenty-five years after the MRC formally came
into being in apartheid South Africa, but also seven months after Nelson
OMandela’s installation as president of a democratic South Africa, its ninth
Board took office. With an African, Professor Malegapuru Makgoba of Witwatersrand
University, as chairperson, with 11 of its 17 members black and five female, this
new Board differed radically from its predecessors, both in composition and intent.
Tellingly too, 12 of the 17 did not speak Afrikaans, which led to the Board’s minutes
henceforth being in English only. ‘We had an [sic] unique opportunity to create an
SAMRC that was free from the shackles of apartheid, grounded on the Constitution
and the best scientific values’, Makgoba recalled. Bullishly, he told the first meeting
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of the new Board that it had an unparalleled chance ‘to restructure and define the
type of medical research we want in South Africa. The Board can set out a blueprint
which our grandchildren will be able to look at and say “These people made the right
decisions”.’ One member of the new Board remembered the positive atmosphere in
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the room that day: ‘We … felt optimistic about the future of the Rainbow Nation.’
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Transformative ardour of this sort characterized Makgoba’s eight years in the
two top jobs at the MRC, 1994–8 as chair of its Board and 1998–2002 as Prozesky’s
successor as president. That he was able to move the institution a long way in this

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