South Africa Sucks first brought us the news about this pathetic attempt to falsify history again. At the end of this post you will find comments translated from a letter from one of the research technicians who worked with Dr Barnard. I have also translated the remarks of Dr Marius Barnard, brother of Dr Chris, from the Afrikaans newspaper Die Burger. As is standard practice with mainstream media in South Africa today, the truth is more often than not only revealed in Afrikaans newspapers and very rarely will liberal English media bother to publish such articles (as is the case with farm murders).
Friday saw the release of a film which propagates the preposterous fantasy that Dr Chris Barnard didn’t actually perform the world’s first heart transplant…it was done by Hamilton Naki, his garden boy.
I kid you not folks. This is NOT a Hayibo type satire. The film Hidden Heart deals with the farcical life & times of Groote Schuur garden boy Hamilton Naki. Naki tended the gardens at this world famous hospital in the early sixties when a Dr Robert Goetz took pity on him and promoted him to vivisection lab cleaner and janitor. Goetz performed medical experiments on animals and Naki’s job was also to hold down animals being operated on. So, for the next 30 years, Naki remained on his gardener pay scale until his death in 2005, cleaning the lab and being a gopher for the doctors who performed this miracle of modern science.
Hamilton Naki
Except, it now turns out that Naki with his Standard 5 (Grade 7) education was actually a black wunderkind who in truth performed the heart transplant operation, only for the evil White oppressor to steal all the glory from him! But wait, it gets better! While Googling for some background info on Dr Naki (in 2003 he received an honorary medical doctorate from – who else – University of Cape Town) I stumbled across this bit of “history”:
Naki credits Goetz as one of his most important teachers. “He taught me all about surgical work, but unfortunately his stay wasn’t long as he had to return to Germany to pursue his research and I was left with the responsibility of teaching surgical research.”
The arrival of Professor Chris Barnard in 1956 was Naki’s second big break. “Barnard began to introduce to South Africa the new techniques of open heart surgery and cardiopulmonary bypass surgery, which he had learned in the US,” says Hickman. Naki initially acted as Barnard’s anaesthetist, where he impressed the heart surgeon with his enthusiasm and an incredible ability to learn, despite his lack of formal education. Within months, he had been appointed Barnard’s principal surgical assistant.
“Despite his limited education, he had an amazing ability to learn anatomical names and recognise anomalies,” Hickman says. Apart from a skilled assistant, Naki cherishes his role as an educator. “In my so-called career as a surgical research lecturer, I taught more than three thousand professors,” he says proudly.
Anaesthetist and chief surgical assistant, and thereafter a surgical research lecturer who trained three thousand professors, all with a Standard 5 education? Clearly Dr Naki was so innately brilliant, he didn’t NEED any education!
Wikipedia quotes Dr Barnard as allegedly saying that “Naki had a steadier hand and superior technical ability than I had”.
In the movie, several interviews are held with Naki. Early on, he claims that he was present during the historical heart op, and even that he was the surgeon who removed the donor heart from a young White woman. The truth however is that Dr Marius Barnard (Chris Barnard’s brother) removed the heart. During a later interview in the movie, Naki completely contradicts himself by saying that he wasn’t present during the op because racist Apartheid legislation forbade him from attending. The entire premise of the movie is that Naki was a brilliant surgeon “kept down by the evil White man” and that Dr Barnard stole Naki’s achievement, and conspired with the Nat government to keep the truth of this supposedly remarkable black man hidden away.
Dr Christiaan Barnard
It seems Blacks are not content with stealing the White man’s property, his cities & towns while p—ing all over his heritage. Now they need to steal his achievements as well. George Orwell’s character Winston Smith worked in the Ministry of Truth, his job being that of erasing history and rewriting it according to party edicts. Original documents that were replaced, were shoved into the “memory hole” which was a tube that led to an incinerator. It seems the villainous Dr Barnard and the unpalatable truth around the world’s first heart transplant has just been discarded into the ‘memory hole’, in favour of a “truth” more in line with the Marxist ANC and its running dogs.
Youtube has a few Spanish language propaganda videos (produced by Cubans) claiming the same ridiculous BS. One doesn’t know whether to laugh or to cry…
The extract below is from the movie’s webpage:
Christian Barnard from Cape Town didn’t write the great success-story of the first heart transplantation in 1967 alone. Hamilton Naki, a black man, was equally part of the sensational operation. «Hidden Heart» tells the story of two men, glamour, injustice and uprising.
On 3 December 2007, it will have been 40 years since the first transplant of a human heart was performed in South Africa. This transplant operation triggered a media response like few other events in the 20th century. Christian Barnard, the lead surgeon, became an internationally celebrated star overnight. A gifted self-promoter, charming and eloquent, he managed to maintain his star status until his death. He found himself welcomed into the circles of the rich and powerful in the entertainment industry, the business world as well as politics.
In the photographs showing the team following the heart transplant, the faces in the picture are all white. No mention is made of the black employees, who conducted the earlier experiments on dog hearts in the animal research lab. Experiments which were of essential importance to the eventual success of the human transplant. While they were not present in the operating theatre, it was their work that laid the foundations for the transplant. One of them was Hamilton Naki.
Up until the end of Apartheid 1994, Barnard was able to bask in the glory alone. Yet in the new democratic South Africa, the traumatic past was reopened from various sides and prominent events and achievements came under renewed scrutiny. Suddenly the name Hamilton Naki popped up in connection with the operation. National and international media latched onto the story of Naki, who fit the bill perfectly as an example of an unsung hero. Naki, moreover, gave us an entirely new version of the historic transplant operation. He claimed to have been present in the operating theatre. Barnard had allowed this, Naki explained, under the condition that he not tell a soul.
Like Barnard, Naki suddenly found himself besieged by journalists, accompanied by glory and fame that likewise came out of the blue. In recognition of this contribution and for his role leading up to the first heart transplant, the University of Cape Town conferred an honorary degree on Naki, the first time in its history it had ever done so for someone without an academic background. Thabo Mbeki awarded him the most important national order.
«Hidden Heart» will combine their career paths in the respective political context. The goal is not to assert that Naki could have been a Barnard were it not for Apartheid. Yet the goal is to work out undeniable parallels in the character of the two men, to show the possibilities for professional development within the political system and the way they each dealt with it and what they made of it. And finally, the film will attempt to show how history can be rewritten when a system seemingly cemented in place for eternity, falls apart.
The story of the two men not only recounts the heart transplant in a new light but also shows how determination and discipline – characteristics possessed by both men – can move mountains. The mountain moved by Barnard went down in the history books but this does not make Naki’s achievements any less – when recounted in the political context of the time. «Heart of Gold» knows no taboos, neither in its treatment of Naki nor of Barnard. The two are to be examined critically yet fairly through a multifaceted kaleidoscope of testimonials from carefully chosen witnesses from the period.
Follow up articles from Die Burger
Annette Evans from Stellenbosch wrote that she worked as research technician in 1961-62 under Dr Chris Barnard. She states that the photo taken of Naki was not in an Operating Room, but in actual fact in a surgical research laboratory in the mortuary in Anzio street – not even situated on the premises of Groote Schuur hospital itself. They referred to the laboratory as the “doglab”, because research was done on dogs.
Hamilton’s (they called him “Hammy”) job was to prepare dogs for surgery by applying general anaesthesia, opening the chest, stop bleeding and closing the incision after the operation. He worked for the surgical research technicians studying under Dr Chris Barnard and Professor Jannie Louw. According to Evans, Hamilton was trustworthy and reliable. He would have gained a lot of experience, as they did numerous operations per week on dogs, but he would never be involved in operations on humans. They loved him and respected him because of his dedication.
Evans reckons the operations carried out on dogs inevitably resulted in the animals suffering, hence the reason for not publicly disclosing the activities of the “doglab”.
In another article, Dr Marius Barnard (the brother of Dr Chris Barnard and who assisted him in the pioneering human heart transplant), said the film which suggests that Hamilton Naki did not receive recognition due to political reasons, is a blatant distortion of the facts. He says it makes a farce of the medical breakthrough achieved by Chris Barnard.
He acknowledged that Naki contributed in the experimental research lab, but the closest he ever came to the Operating Room was about 8km – the distance between the hospital and where Naki stayed.
Mr Hennie Joubert, curator of the heart museum at Groote Schuur, also confirmed that Naki contributed to the research lab activities, but that the movie isn’t factually correct.
Professor Rosemary Hickman, surgeon for more than 30 years at Groote Schuur, said it is a pity that political agenda should triumph over the dedication and hard work of Hamilton Naki – a wonderful opportunity to portray the result of hard work has been undone by making Hamilton a political pawn.
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the story first ran in the NY Times. It was later proven to be a fake! I even saw that when I read it. Just another bullshit story to show the “evils of Apartheid”
What absolute HOGWASH !
Groote Schuur Hospital served people of all colours and there were NO duplicate Operating Theatres for diferent races or seperate theatres foand and Whites.
The hospital had a number of Theatre suites for the various disciplines. As I recall, they were Main Theatres which was designated B-2 and later became the Charles F M Saint suite. This suite comprised 3 Theatres with student galleries. The Theatres were for general and Cardiac surgery.
Then there were Theatre suites for Urology, Gyneacology, Ear Nose and Throat, Eye Surgery, Orthopeadics, Neuro Surgery (J-7) in a seperate building known as J Block and a suite of 2 theatres in Casualty.
These Theatres served everyone, regardless of Race!
Where n earth do people get this notion that Naki would not have been allowed into an Operating Theatre at Groote Schuur Hospital, when in fact, those Theatres have since inception, always served people of all RACES!
It is now 2011 and there are so many countries where people, because of their social standing, religious beliefs, the fact they are poor or look dirty, are turned away from hospitals. In fact, the treatment of Black people, by Black people is far worse as it lacks real CARE and EMPATHY than in the years of Apartheid, when nursing staff of all races, gave the same CARE to everyone, irrespective of RACE or who they were.