Abstract
In the wake of the first heart transplant 53 years ago in Cape Town, Professor Christian Barnard found himself to be the subject of much media attention with his face appearing on the cover of Time magazine, highlighting the significance of this milestone in transplant surgery. While the importance of this moment in the history of transplant surgery has never been in dispute, the roster of people who made this achievement possible has, with the presence of one particular individual being the source of great controversy in the 53 years following the procedure.
Highlights
Hamilton Naki, a black South African, was born in in the Transkei region of the Eastern Cape of South Africa (SA) in 1926, in a small village called Ngcingwane. He remained in primary education until the age of 14, following which he left home for Cape Town, taking a job as a gardener at the University of Cape Town (UCT) Medical School.[1]
It was here that his life would take a turn for the extraordinary, ascending from his gardening duties to become an essential part of the research group responsible for the first heart transplant
Goetz arrived in Cape town in 1938 as a research fellow, having fled Nazi Germany after being denied his medical licence by Wilhelm Fick, the Minister of the Interior at the time
Summary
Hamilton Naki, a black South African, was born in in the Transkei region of the Eastern Cape of South Africa (SA) in 1926, in a small village called Ngcingwane. Naki’s role in the lab continued, and when Christian Barnard returned to Cape Town from Minneapolis in 1958, cardiac research in animal models had expanded greatly at the University.
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