Page 62 - A Widening Idea of Health and Health Research - The South African Medical Research Council from Creation to COVID

Positively into the New South Africa: The MRC, 1995–2012

MRC’s finances his first priority, as pursuing transformation from a weak financial base
was a recipe for failure. Critically, he was able to persuade the new Department of Arts,
Culture, Science and Technology (DACST) to raise its annual baseline grant to the
MRC by over a third soon after it took over responsibility for this from the Department
of National Health in 1994. The MRC was also able to tap several research funds
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specially set up by the new department and allied ministries for particular purposes
like medical and technology innovation, vaccine development, and tackling national
health priorities.
Second only to these sums was the MRC’s escalating income from contract and
collaborative projects, especially with big public and private funders in the Global
North, like the National Institutes of Health in the US, the World Health Organization
(WHO), the Gates Foundation and the British MRC, which after 1994 almost fell over
each other in the rush to set up joint research projects with the MRC in the newly
democratic South Africa. Not only was it located in an accessible country in which
diseases like HIV/AIDS and TB were at epidemic levels, but also it offered a well-
developed infrastructure to investigate these, as it was ‘a focal point that international
funders can target in order to pour resources throughout the university system in
South Africa … a [non-partisan] conduit for major research funding [and thus] a
neutral broker’, as its head of research portrayed it. To overseas research bodies this
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made it doubly attractive, especially as it ‘has an exemplary and sophisticated system
of administering money, which matches that of some UK universities and is superior
to that of local universities’, an impressed Wellcome Trust executive explained
patronizingly. In his experience the MRC was ‘an institution which understands
how to handle international research grants, making it particularly attractive among
developing countries’. Indeed, by 2002, 40 per cent of its annual income derived
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from such external sources – compared with 15 per cent ten years earlier – and it had
created the new position of director of international affairs on its staff. Recognizing
the importance of upholding this very positive reputation, Makgoba insisted on
strict financial controls at the MRC and what he called a ‘business-like management
approach’ in its operation.
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The swelling income this generated – the 2002 figure was almost double that
of 1998, when Makgoba became president – allowed him to push ahead with
transformation across the board. Thus, to give substance to the MRC’s recently
approved policy of affirmative action, which spelt out to selection committees that
‘Employment Equity is a guiding principle in … [the MRC’s] employment policies
and practices’, a significant number of internships, traineeships and mentorships
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specifically for promising black graduates were also established, at least 20 per cent

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