On a Career Heartbreak

Chris had developed the symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis in the late 1970s, and by 1983, the issue forced him out of the operating room. That was a blow. He had been a surgeon for all his adult life, specifically a heart surgeon. It was all he wanted to be ever since he was a child. Born in South Africa to a father who was a minister in the Dutch Reformed Church, Chris had been taught service to others from an infant. One of his siblings, Adam, had been a “blue baby,” that is, a heart defect caused his skin to appear blue because of a lack of oxygenation in the blood. That had a big impact on Chris’s decision to become a heart surgeon.

After his education and residency in South Africa, Chris grew interested in correcting intestinal underdevelopment in newborns, specifically a bowel obstruction that was often life-threatening. Through research and experimentation, Chris developed a new protocol and surgical procedure for fixing the issue so that what had been a potential deadly situation became a fairly common and routine surgical fix. But his true love was cardiological surgery. And he was great at it, developing new techniques and becoming well known in that corner of the medical establishment. And Chris was a heartbreaker. The handsome surgeon had girlfriend after girlfriend, managed to marry and divorce three times, and had six children over the course of his life. He dated models, actresses, and even hobnobbed with royalty. For Chris, the women were part of the successful heart surgeon career.

But, then, because of the arthritis, by 1983, that well-established career was over. What would he do? Chris then experienced something of a mid-life crisis. He was in his early 40s, at what should have been the prime of his career as a surgeon. Chris turned to anti-aging research. While his hands had betrayed him, his mind was as sharp as ever. But Chris, for reasons unknown, put his considerable reputation behind a questionable skin cream, a product named Glycol. Chris said that research (it wasn’t clear if it was his research or someone else’s) showed the product reversed wrinkles, hydrated the skin, and could visibly reverse the signs of aging on the face. Well, truth be told, pretty much any cream will do hydrate the skin, including Vaseline, according to a article published at the time. In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration didn’t offer Glycol approval for use as a treatment for aging because, they said, the claims were hokum. Rather than a drug to stop aging, Glycol was classified merely as a cosmetic. Chris was heartbroken. He retreated into himself and stopped all work on the anti-aging idea.

What do you do when your career is over and your reputation is in tatters?

Chris didn’t quit. He worked doubly hard to re-establish his reputation. With funds from his years as a surgeon, Chris established a foundation, based in Austria. The foundation is still ongoing. It provide funds for the families of low-income children from developing nations who need live-saving heart surgeries to travel to Europe where they could have needed surgeries they ordinarily couldn’t afford. Through his foundation, Chris continues to help provide for these surgeries even though he passed away in 2001 at the age of 78.

It turns out that the heartbreaking surgeon salvaged his reputation by opening his heart in providing for others and making miracles happen for families who faced the possible loss of their loved ones. But that had been his life as a surgeon as well. You see, before arthritis took his surgical abilities away, Dr. Christiaan Barnard had been the first surgeon to successfully transplant a heart from one human to another in 1968.

On Concentration Camps

Some topics almost hurt to even think about. This is one of those topics. The abject, heartless, evil, and inhumane (and inhuman) treatment that occurred there is almost beyond our comprehension as a species. And that’s a major reason we need to be reminded of these supreme examples of human inhumanity.

Let’s start with some facts. The system that created the camps was overly racist. There was nothing hidden or deceptive about that. While some others were swept up in the net of the camps, they were created to imprison specific ethnicities and groups. That can’t be denied (although many in recent years have tried to do so). And, while many of the victims who perished in the camps were murdered outright, we tend to forget that there were oh so many others who died of disease and malnutrition.

You see, the camps were poorly built and the supply chains that were supposed to give them even the bare needs of food and even water were often disrupted due to other miliary and national priorities and then by the war itself. The men who ran the camps had little interest in insuring that the camp internees were seen to or provided for. Thus, basic sanitation was non-existent. People were crowded into spaces designed for several times fewer than the number who eventually were placed there. As supplies dwindled nationally as the war continued, the government’s position was that the military and then their “own” people should have the priority of receiving proper nutrition. These “other” people who were in the camps? Well, not much thought was given to them regarding any relief at all.

Thus, thousands died of having no food or water, and thousands more from typhus, dysentery, and other diseases that could have been easily preventable if proper rationing had been instituted nationwide and if simple, proper sanitation elements were employed. But that was the choice the government made, so please don’t argue that these deaths by starvation and disease were somehow “accidental” or even beyond the government’s ability to help.

Some of the first reports on the dire conditions in the camps that made it back to the shores of Britain were made by a woman named Emily Hobhouse. It seems that she had managed to get a tour of one of the camps because the administrator simply didn’t care who saw what was happening to those placed there. In fact, Hobhouse later reported, he seemed rather proud of the fact that these people were suffering and dying. She was understandably shocked and stunned by what she saw, by the attitude of the camp commandant, and by the guards who stood passively by as people fell dead at their feet.

Hobhouse made a report to members of Parliament during the war. But most members who heard about her story, while outraged to a degree over what she reported, said that there was little they could do. That was a continent away, they argued, and they had no ability to make changes. Besides, compared to the war itself, the conditions of those in the concentration camps were way, way down on the list of British government priorities. So, nothing was done.

Finally, the war ended. The camps were broken up. But the damage had been done. The incredibly high rate of deaths among those imprisoned stunned the outside world. The especially high morality rate among children shocked many the most. How could a civilized nation allow this to happen? Emily Hobhouse’s report was resurrected, and the Parliament debated what to do about those in charge of the camps, but nothing was done to punish or condemn the camp administrators.

And, to this day, we don’t know for sure how many Dutch and African men, women, and children died in the British concentration camps of the Second Boer War from 1899-1902.

On a First-Class Rail Carriage

The train trip began quiet enough. The dapper young lawyer showed his first-class ticket to the conductor who validated it.

The lawyer took his seat.

In 1893, segregation in South Africa was not only in practice, but it was also ingrained in the mentality of the minority white population. As difficult as it may be for some to believe today, at that time, Black South Africans were not simply treated as inferior people; they were considered sub-human. All aspects of both public and private life were segregated.

So was this train.

The first-class section of the train was usually occupied by white business types and white “gentlemen.” They not only did not want to be around the Blacks of the country, but they also did not care for the white lower classes, either.

The young lawyer had purchased his ticket for the first-class coach because, as an attorney, he could afford the ticket and he enjoyed the space and comfort it provided. When he took his seat in his neatly pressed suit and perfectly tied cravat, the young man sat back to read his newspaper while the journey continued. He didn’t notice the man opposite him begin to frown at him on the other side of the paper.

A few moments later, the man got up and found a conductor. “I want him removed from the coach,” the man told the conductor, motioning to the young lawyer. “Sir,” the man replied, “he has a ticket. He is not from South Africa.” But, the man persisted, and he threatened the conductor’s job if he didn’t remove the lawyer from the coach. The conductor reluctantly relented.

He entered the train car and cleared his throat uncomfortably. The lawyer put down his paper. “May I help you?” the lawyer said. “Sir,” the conductor began, “it seems that your presence has made the other passengers…uncomfortable. I am asking you to move to the second-class compartment.” The lawyer was incredulous. He produced his ticket again and insisted that he had done nothing wrong. “I realize that, sir,” the conductor explained, “but I must insist that you remove yourself from this coach.” The young lawyer was shocked at such behavior, but he refused to move. “Your railway sold me a first-class ticket. I will hold them to their contract,” he said.

The conductor turned to the man who had complained. The man narrowed his eyes and said, “If he refuses to move, you must do your duty.” The conductor assessed the situation and made the decision that would change the course of history. At the next stop, Pietermaritzburg, he had the young lawyer forcibly removed from the train.

That cold night, the lawyer shivered in quiet anger on a bench at the station until another train came along the next day. Even though he was not a Black South African, this incident played a major part in his decision to create his doctrine of non-violent civil disobedience with which he would change the world.

“I was born in India,” Gandhi once said, “but I was made in South Africa.”

On a Troublemaker

The headmaster paced silently before the line of schoolboys, his hands clasped behind his back as he strode back and forth.

Finally, he stopped in the middle of the line before one rather thin boy with an oval face.

“Was it you? You’re behind all this, aren’t you, you troublemaker?” he asked accusingly, looking down at the lad.

The young student did not answer and stared back up at the white schoolmaster.

The boy had been given the name Rolihlahla by his family; it does indeed mean “troublemaker,” and the boy certainly grew up to embody that moniker. Born into a royal family in Africa, his father was a polytheist and a polygamist. His mother, the third of his father’s wives, had converted from the religions of her ancestors to Methodism. It was his mother who raised him, along with two sisters. She insisted that the children attend a Methodist school in a nearby village, and it was at this school that 9-year-old Rolihlahla’s proclivity for mischievousness began to manifest itself.

In this case, the trouble Rolihlahla caused was organizing a protest against, of all things, the poor quality of food at his school. His little protest saw the students refuse to eat anything until the food improved.

“Don’t you realize that we feed you well—better! than other schools?” the headmaster said, narrowing his eyes at the boy. What followed this rhetorical question was a long lecture by the headmaster about the good things that the colonizers had brought to Africa: Medicine, education, wealth, science, technology.

What was left out of the speech was that the colonizers also brought oppression and economic slavery, racism and greed.

And Rolihlahla had begun to feel a strong pull towards seeking justice where he saw injustice. That, too, was something the colonizers brought. They seemed to preach about liberty but not allow it, justice but deny it, expression but suppress it.

The boy was only implementing the lessons his “betters” were teaching him.

This protest against the food must be quashed, the headmaster said emphatically. Still, the boy remained silent.

“Well?” the headmaster said.

Finally, he spoke.

“Yes. I organized it. I put the others up to it. The food is of poor quality, and the students should eat what the teachers and staff eat.”

The headmaster pursed his lips in a triumphant smile.

“And, what’s more,” the boy continued, “I am correct.”

The headmaster’s smile vanished. “I am very sorry you feel that way,” he began. He dismissed the other boys, and then addressed the troublemaker.

“You are expelled. I will write a letter to your family. You are dismissed.”

Now it was the troublemaker’s turn to smile slightly.

“You find this matter amusing?” the headmaster asked.

“No, sir,” the boy answered. “I find it unjust.”

For Nelson Mandela, this first lesson on injustice would never be forgotten.