First Heart Transplant

Christiaan Barnard was the South African surgeon first to perform a heart transplant on humans. He was born and raised in Beaufort West, and attended medical school at the University of Cape Town. It is in that same city that he performed his miracle surgery back in 1967.

He was accostumed to exchanging organs between people, it seems, because he performed the first kidney transplant as well, in 1953.The unlucky soul that provided the heart for this medical milestone was Denise Darvall, who died instantly when she was hit by a car whilst crossing the streets in Cape Town. Much to the good fortune of Louis Washansky, a 54 year old who suffered from an incurable heart disease.

After the successful heart transplant, Louis did not enjoy his new life for long. 18 Days later he died. From pneumonia, not a heart related problem.

So this comes to show that South Africa has good hospitals, and that you have to be careful when crossing the streets in Cape Town.

Sea point

Up to the thirties, Sea Point was a little seaside resort out of town, where affluent Capetonian citizens had their holiday and weekend homes.
From the fifties on, highrising apartment houses were erected. Similar to Hillbrow and Johannesburg, it was regarded to be chic - á la New York - to live in a high building.Sea Point has a different face nowadays. "Upper Sea Point", on the slopes of the Signal Hill is characterised by expensive private mansions.

Down at the sea promenade you find a long row of luxury apartment blocks. In between lies the Main Road with pubs, music clubs, coffeeshops and some good restaurants like the Chinese Mr Chan or bistros like the lively New York Bagel. But also stripclubs, brothels, gambling places, drug trafficking and the like can still be found here.

Back in 1884-85, European countries were carving up the African continent and dividing it amongst themselves at the Berlin Conference. There and then King Leopold II tried very hard to acquire a colony. He strongly believed a country’s greatness lied in the possession of colonies. The Belgian people, nor the Belgian government were interested in this. But Leopold II got his way and hired the famous explorer Stanley (“Dr Livingstone I presume?”) to set boundaries for his own private colony named Congo. He extracted great personal wealth out of this, at the expense of the Congolese people. Under his rule an estimated 8 to 30 million were killed. No accurate numbers are available. To put this in perspective: the estimated number of Jews killed in WWII is 6 million.
When laborers (including children) did not work to expectations, their hand was cut off. This and other atrocities made King Leopold II notorious till today. Due to these human rights abuses, the first mass human rights movement was formed: “the Congo Reform Association”. Should we now claim that the Human Rights movement exists thanks to Belgium?

I had 17 years of education in Belgium and I can not remember that this was mentioned even once.

SA in numbers

South Africa is usually abbreviated to SA - it has around 43 million inhabitants - 2.4 million of those live in Cape Town - Cape Town is the capital of Western Province - and that is 1 of the 9 provinces of SA - SA has 11 official languages and a lot more unofficial ones - English is spoken most in business and official matters - but is only the fifth most spoken language - in 2006 income per capita of SA was $5,390 - that of Belgium was $38,600 i.e. 7 times higher - SA is to host the 2010 soccer world cup - it is the first African country ever to do so - and they are really looking forward to that