Obituaries by definition capture the biographical highlights of a deceased person’s life. However, faulty memories and different agendas can distort even the most carefully crafted life sketch. Hamilton Naki (1926-2005), who grew up in the Eastern Cape region of South Africa, is a case in point.

He left school as a teenager and hiked to Cape Town, where the University of Cape Town (UCT) employed him as a gardener. It is here where his paths crossed with that of Chris Barnard, the South African heart transplant pioneer. Some have seen similarities in the impoverished childhoods of the black man from Transkei and the white man from Beaufort West. Others chose to foster a myth, rooted in embellishments of Naki’s formidable surgical skills acquired in the UCT labs. They even went so far as to suggest that this quiet technician could have assisted Barnard with his historic operation. The race to transplant the first human heart had, after all, required great technical expertise in addition to the need to overcome medical and legal difficulties as detailed elsewhere.¹ Could a black man have extracted the first human heart, which was successfully transplanted in 1967 by Barnard, as mentioned in unsubstantiated reports?

The story appeared in his obituary in post-apartheid South Africa and may have been believed by many, but it was not true.² Instead, it detracted from the authentic Naki narrative that deserved to be explored in its own right. Fortunately, some of those he taught and his contemporaries have been able to set the record straight. Prof. Anwar Mall (Department of Surgery, UCT) wrote an article, extolling Naki’s humble personality, surgical work on animals and teaching abilities.³ He emphasized that Naki had assisted in the research and experimental work preceding and following the first heart transplant. Some of those he taught have gone on to become professors of surgery and heads of departments. Prof. Rosemary Hickman, former head of the J. S. Marais laboratory (where Barnard developed his work), who was assisted by Naki for 30 years, also praised his remarkable dexterity and surgical skills. Naki attributed his own skills to “stealing with his eyes,”³ a phrase also used by Barnard in explaining the technical expertise he had acquired from the American father of heart transplantation, Norman Shumway.¹

Who knows what may have happened if Naki had received the same advantages afforded by Chris Barnard and others in apartheid South Africa? The political landscape changed during the course of Naki’s lifetime. Another famous son of the Transkei, Nelson Mandela, became the first president of post-apartheid South Africa. Black and Indian student enrollment at UCT increased from negligible numbers in the apartheid years to 67% in 2003.⁴ These young people are beneficiaries of the struggles and triumphs of people like Naki. He was awarded an honorary degree by UCT in 2003.

The author wishes to thank Profs. Hickman and Mall of UCT for reading and commenting on this article.

References

¹ McRae D., Every Second Counts—_The Race to Transplant the First Human Heart._ New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons; 2006.

² Wines M., _Accounts of South African’s career now seen as overstated. _The New York Times 2005.

³ Mall A.S., Hamilton Naki—A Surgical Sherpa. S Afr Med J 2007;97(2):95-6.

⁴ Breier M, Wildschut A., Doctors in a Divided Society. In: Pienaar S, Editor: Human Sciences Research Council, South Africa; 2006.