Hidden Heart

On the 3rd of December 1967, South African heart surgeon Dr. Christiaan Barnard of Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town made medical history by being the first person to successfully transplant a human heart. Transplant teams throughout the world had been poised to perform this historic operation, but it was the little-known Barnard from a much-maligned South Africa who scooped them to it. Overnight, Barnard became an international celebrity and perhaps the world’s first celebrity doctor. But what role did the enigmatic Hamilton Naki play in the first successful heart transplant operation? Was this former gardener, who had been later been employed in the heart research laboratory at Groote Schuur, part of the team that performed the historical operation and, if so, why was this fact kept hidden for so long?

This is the story of two men, glamour, injustice and uprising.