Truths rewritten

By August Pointneuf

HAMILTON NAKI

Robert McKay, writing in The Times, May 29 2009 says:

THE documentary Hidden Heart looks back at one of the proudest moments in South African history — the first successful heart transplant — and finds that it might also have been one of our most shameful.

While Barnard was whisked off to the US to rub shoulders with movie stars and became famous for his womanising ways as the “doctor of hearts”, Naki was denied an entry in the history books by the apartheid government and ultimately pensioned off as a gardener.

The hype surrounding the movie which incorporated aspects of this man’s life demonstrates, again, a bias towards the contribution of the white man in Africa. Naki was not denied entry into the history books because he was black: It was because he was an ordinary man doing an ordinary, but unusual, job

What is not spelled out, and was certainly obscured by earlier articles in The Economist, The Times and The Telegraph was that Hamilton Naki worked as a technician in an animal laboratory. He never treated a human. He never went to Groote Schuur Hospital where the transplantation was performed, except as a visitor.

Doing this kind of work, day after day, enabled Naki to develop technical skills, but not unique or superior to tens of thousands of others involved in occupations requiring high levels of manual skill. He is said to have been a skilled anaesthetist but this must also be interpreted in the context that he was anaesthetising animals which would ultimately be killed, and those that died under anaesthesia would be considered “bad luck” and disposable.

Hamilton Naki showed himself, over the years, to be exceedingly conscientious and dedicated to his work, arising with regularity in the early hours as was necessary to prepare the laboratory for the day’s experimentation.

There is no evidence that Hamilton claimed to have taken part in the world’s first heart transplant. What was purported to be this evidence was a filmed interview between a reporter and Naki. It will be clear to all who have an understanding of Naki’s accent and Xhosa phraseology (the interviewer was American-English) that the two were speaking at cross purposes. Hamilton was speaking about his work in the animal laboratory. The American reporter was trying to prompt Hamilton into talking about events during the first transplant, which Hamilton did not understand at that date. When the American reporter asked “Did you take the heart out?” Hamilton replied “Yes I (used to) take the heart (s) out (in the animal laboratory)”.

Hamilton’s son, on the other hand, deliberately perpetuated the misinformation, saying that the family should be awarded money for his father’s role in the first heart transplant.

An honorary Master of Science was given to Naki, not as in recognition of academic achievement (because there was none) but because of his conscientiousness and the part that he played (within a team of very many others) in developing transplantation surgery at the University of Cape Town.

The State Award given to Naki by President Thabo Mbeki was entirely unwarranted and does an extraordinary disservice to tens of thousands of other people who have worked carefully and conscientiously during their lives in both the public and private sectors of South Africa. It reflected the distasteful, dishonest and distorted agenda of the Black-propaganda machine, which has now become the heir to the huge existing body of falsified anti-Apartheid propaganda.

This post is not designed to belittle Naki. It is, however, designed to be a vehement criticism and accusation of those who choose to pump untruthful pro-Black propaganda at every level (including those like Robert McKay who hold themselves to be journalists) of culpable dishonesty.

It should be noted that the Times, the Economist and the Telegraph have all retracted their previous articles on Hamilton Naki, and well they should.
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August Pointneuf