Barnard was an outspoken opponent of South Africa's laws of apartheid, and was not afraid to criticise his nation's government, although he had to temper his remarks to some extent to travel abroad.[citation needed] Rather than leaving his homeland, he used his fame to campaign for a change in the law. Christiaan's brother, Marius Barnard, went into politics, and was elected to the legislature on an anti-apartheid platform. Barnard later stated that the reason he never won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was probably because he was a "white South African".[7]