Medunsa and the training of black doctors for South Africa

Rethinking professional identity formation amidst protests and social upheaval: a journey in Africa

The under-representation of minoritized or previously oppressed groups in research challenges the current universal understanding of professional identity formation (PIF). To date, there has been no recognition of an African influence on PIF, which is crucial for understanding this phenomenon in places like South Africa, a society in which the inequity of the apartheid era still prevails. In addition, there is little data examining how social upheaval could impact PIF. This study uses interviews with medical students to explore PIF within the context of social upheaval during the 2015-2016 protests that rocked South Africa when students challenged asymmetries of power and privilege that persisted long after the country's democratic transition. The combination of the primary author's autoethnographic story, weaved into the South African sociohistorical context and ubuntu philosophy, contributes to this study of PIF in the South African context. The use of an African metaphor allowed the reorientation of PIF to reflect the influence of an ubuntu-based value system. Using the calabash as a metaphor, participants' experiences were framed and organized in two ways: a calabash worldview and the campus calabash. The calabash worldview is a multidimensional mixture of values that include ubuntu, reflections of traditional childhoods, and the image of women as igneous rocks, which recognizes the power and influence on PIF of the women who raised the participants. Introducing an African ubuntu-based perspective into the PIF discourse may redirect the acknowledgement of context and local reality in developing professional identity.

Race, Kidney Transplants, Immunosuppression Research, and White Supremacy under Apartheid, 1960-80

This paper uses the history of kidney transplantation in South Africa as a lens through which to write a racialized, micro history that illustrates the politics of medical discoveries and medical research at one of South Africa's most prestigious medical research universities, the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in Johannesburg. Between 1966 and the 1980s, the Wits team became the most advanced and prolific kidney transplant unit in the country. Yet the racist, oppressive Apartheid system fundamentally shaped these developments. Transplantation, as this paper shows, became an elite medical procedure, performed by a select group of white doctors on mostly white patients. For these doctors, transplantation showed their medical prowess and displayed the technical advancements they were able to make in research and clinical practice as they strove to position South Africa as a significant international player in medical research, despite academic boycotts and increasing sanctions. Transplantation became a symbol of white supremacy in a country where the black majority were excluded from anything but the most basic health care.

Black doctors and discrimination under South Africa's apartheid regime

This article discusses an under-researched group and provides an analytical overview of the comparative experiences of African, Indian and Coloured doctors at South African universities during the apartheid era. It probes diversity of experience in training and practice as well as gendered differentiation amongst black students before going on to discuss the careers and political activism of black doctors as well as the impact of recent transformational change on their position. It briefly assesses how singular this South African experience was.