In 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. 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?

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