SAMRC Contact Details

The South African Medical Research Council’s head office number is +27 21 938 0911 and its general address is info@mrc.ac.za. Head office is on Francie van Zijl Drive, Parowvallei, Cape Town. The other three offices are Pretoria on +27 12 339 8500, Durban on +27 31 203 4700 and Delft on 021 955 1900. We read this on samrc.ac.za on 25 September 2026.

Official contact details

Cape Town head office	+27 21 938 0911
Head office address	Francie van Zijl Drive, Parowvallei, Cape Town
Head office postal	PO Box 19070, Tygerberg, 7505
Email	info@mrc.ac.za
Pretoria	+27 12 339 8500, 1 Soutpansburg Road, Pretoria; Private Bag X385, Pretoria, 0001
Durban	+27 31 203 4700, 491 Peter Mokaba Ridge Road, Overport, Durban; PO Box 70380, Overport, 4091
Durban HIV Prevention Research Unit	+27 31 242 3600
Delft	021 955 1900, off Hindle Road, Brentwood Park, Driftsands, Cape Town, 7580
Online	The contact form on samrc.ac.za, with enquiry types for a general enquiry, general feedback and website feedback

The email domain is not the website domain

This catches people out constantly, so it is worth stating plainly.

The website is at samrc.ac.za. The email addresses are at mrc.ac.za, without the S. The council’s general address is info@mrc.ac.za, and every staff address on its site follows the same pattern. An address you construct yourself by putting a name in front of samrc.ac.za will not arrive.

It cuts the other way too. If you receive mail from an mrc.ac.za address, the shorter domain is not in itself a sign that something is wrong, which is the assumption a cautious person would otherwise make.

SAMRC does not give medical advice

The council states this itself, twice on its own contact page: it is a research organisation and does not provide medical advice.

That matters because the SAMRC’s name attaches to research on HIV, tuberculosis, cancer, burden of disease and much else, and a search for one of those subjects can land you here when what you actually need is clinical care or a specific programme. Calling +27 21 938 0911 with a symptom or a diagnosis will not get you a clinical answer, and the switchboard has nowhere to route it.

For care, start with your clinic, your general practitioner or the hospital treating you. For a research study you have read about, the study itself normally publishes its own recruitment contact, and that is the number to use rather than the council’s switchboard.

Who runs the council now

Professor Ntobeko Ntusi has been President and Chief Executive Officer since 1 July 2024. The council’s own page records that he came from the University of Cape Town and Groote Schuur Hospital, where he was Chair and Head of the Department of Medicine.

A good deal of published material still names his predecessor, so if you are checking a document or a directory entry against reality, the date above is the one that matters. No telephone number or mailbox is published for the president’s office, and none appears here.

Reporting something

The council runs two separate reporting channels, and they are not interchangeable:

• Research misconduct and alleged research breaches go to transgression.samrc.ac.za, which is run by the Research Integrity Office.
• Fraud and corruption involving suppliers go to scmfraudreporting.samrc.ac.za, which sits with supply chain management.

Sending a procurement complaint to the research integrity channel, or the reverse, will cost you time. Pick the one that matches what you are reporting.

Media enquiries and information requests

The council publishes no general media or press mailbox. Each press release instead carries the name and address of a specific person in its corporate communications office at the foot of that release.

For a journalist that is workable: take the contact from the release you are actually writing about, because it will be the person briefed on it. We do not reproduce those names and mobile numbers here. They belong to individuals rather than to a desk, they change with staff, and a personal mobile republished in a directory outlives the job it was attached to.

The same applies to requests under the Promotion of Access to Information Act. The council names two deputy information officers on its contact page, one in the Research Integrity Office and one in Knowledge and Information Management Services, with their addresses. Take those from the council’s own contact page at the moment you need them rather than from any directory, this one included.

Before you call

• Know which office you want. Four sites share one organisation, and the switchboards are separate.
• Name the research unit or the study if you have it. The council is organised into units, and the unit is what a switchboard can route to.
• Use the form for anything that is not urgent. It lets you pick the enquiry type, which routes it better than a switchboard can.
• Do not send patient records or identity documents to a general mailbox. The council is not a treating institution and has no reason to hold them.

Sources

• The contact page on samrc.ac.za, for the four offices’ telephone numbers, street and postal addresses, the general email address, the enquiry types on its form, the medical advice disclaimer, the two reporting channels and the deputy information officers (read 25 September 2026)
• The president’s page on samrc.ac.za, for Professor Ntobeko Ntusi’s title, his start date of 1 July 2024 and his previous post (read 25 September 2026)
• The press releases section of samrc.ac.za, for the absence of a general media mailbox and the practice of naming a communications contact on each release (read 25 September 2026)

Where the council publishes something different on samrc.ac.za, its own page is the authority.