The South African Medical Research Council turns 50 in 2019. Understandably, there is an expectation that this is an occasion for celebration – prompted by the SAMRC’s longevity, the contributions it has made to the medical sciences and its importance today.
With the #RhodesMustFall movement in 2015, there were politicians and commentators who tried to delegitimise the anti-colonial sentiments of that movement by arguing that “colonialism wasn’t all bad” and that “colonialism” gave us good infrastructure, the rule of law, governance etc.
And British rule – which formally ended in with the Act of Union in 1910 – may have presided over the development of infrastructure and the bureaucracy of governance. But it was also a development entirely at the behest of and in the interest of the British elite – witnessed not only by the seizures of land but also the conquest of indigenous people during colonial wars. And, when gold was discovered in Boer territory, going to war in the interest of the new mining barons.
Which brings us to the history of the SAMRC, and how there is something to celebrate after 50 years, provided we continue the ongoing transformation of the institution. After World War II, the Smuts Government absorbed the research work of the SAIMR into the much larger Council for Scientific and Industrial Research in 1945 .
But, in the intervening years, the 1948 codification of South Africa’s racial oppression into what became known as apartheid after the victory of the National Party in that year’s whites-only elections, saw apartheid thinking frame the health research paradigm of the 1969-launched SAMRC. MedTech’s failure and subsequent liquidation, however, resulted in the SAMRC having to write off an estimated R2.7-million of its investment in the company in 1993.
Today the SAMRC produces the major studies in South Africa on the principal causes of death and disease; undertakes environmental and epidemiological studies which warn us of the major environmental impacts on public health while producing researched reports on healthcare systems and options that can best realise our commitment to universal access to healthcare.
This explicitly means the promotion and development of black people, in the broadest sense of the word; women, and people with disabilities in access to scientific knowledge; the composition of the scientific community; the practice of scientific research; and the nature of the health sciences itself.