Page 64 - 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

responsibilities, which made a better-paid position elsewhere very appealing, despite
the efforts of the new, all-black MRC Young Scientists Forum to make the institution
a congenial workplace for them. To be sure, in some cases these initiatives worked
well. For instance, one black staffer clearly felt fulfilled when she explained in 2015, ‘I
feel a lot more appreciated as a member of this community; the SAMRC has invested
a lot in my development; 9 years ago I came here as a novice researcher with a social
work background, but today I have a PhD in Medical Science. I came here as a young
researcher, with big dreams to develop and test new ways of producing knowledge in
poor Black communities, and I am doing just that! I feel that I have a lot of scope to
develop my chosen niche.’ 23
In other cases, however, the enduring weight of South Africa’s racist past continued
to weigh on new black appointees. One was frustrated that an ‘overly rigid sense
of hierarchy on the part of some senior personnel leads to squashing of intelligent,
young staff, especially previously disadvantaged staff’, while another complained
24
that ‘career paths which would make black scientists’ contribution significant [were]
not clearly defined’; indeed, he felt that ‘transformation at the MRC is very slow if one
considers it beyond statistics of blacks joining the organisation’.
25
This was most apparent in the make-up of the echelon of senior staff, which was
most difficult to alter because vacancies in this category occurred less frequently and
because filling them meant competing directly for personnel with the high-paying
private sector or foreign institutions. To address this problem, new positions were
created at the senior level to provide, inter alia, black role models and mentors, and
26
a special effort was made to retain and grow the MRC’s own timber and groom it into
the next generation of leaders. Its recruitment policy, it openly acknowledged, was
‘an affirmative action tool’. Yet, for all these efforts, in 2009 the head of its Human
27
Relations Division still lamented that the transformation of the body of scientists at the
MRC was ‘thin at higher levels: there is not much movement in terms of resignations
and retirement at higher levels’. The incumbents were no more than ‘an ageing
28
cohort of scientists … [with] their skewed demographic representation’, a Board chair
fumed dismissively when asked about the paucity of black staff at this level.
29
Yet, those black South Africans who did make it into senior managerial positions
under Makgoba did enjoy greater freedom to make decisions than their predecessors
had, as the MRC’s modus operandi became less hierarchical. Ideally, what Makgoba
said he sought was to create an environment in which, for instance, members of the
high-level Executive Management Committee (EMC), which he chaired, did not feel
that they worked under him but developed their line function ‘in a manner that they
saw fit – as long as it was excellent and it was the best’, as he chose to express it. ‘I was

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