Dr. Barnard to Back Anti-Apartheid Party
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CAPE TOWN, South Africa — Heart-transplant pioneer Dr. Christiaan Barnard entered party politics Friday, vowing to campaign for the anti-apartheid Democratic Party in parliamentary elections in September.
Barnard, who carried out the world’s first heart transplant in 1967, told reporters at his home in Cape Town that he no longer has faith in the ruling National Party.
The Democratic Party is the third-largest party in South Africa’s whites-only House of Assembly.
Barnard’s brother, Marius, also a transplant surgeon, has been an opposition Progressive Federal Party legislator for years but said recently he will not seek reelection.
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