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Hamilton Naki

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Hamilton Naki (26 June 1926 – 29 May 2005) was a South African surgical assistant and teacher. He was born in Ngcingane, a town in the Eastern Cape of South Africa.

He was educated up until 14 (primary school education level). Hamilton’s early life under Apartheid system in South Africa was extremely difficult.

Medical career

Hamilton Naki was fortunate to get a job as a gardener at the great University of Cape Town. He was there for ten years. After many years Hamilton was selected by Dr. Robert Goetz of the Medical Faculty to work in the clinical laboratories to look after animals and carry out basic duties. Despite his lack of formal education he was a quick learner and a man with great capabilities and was given greater surgical procedures, his reliability and capacity were recognized, and he received special permission to continue research in the laboratories.

Goetz first asked him to help him hold a giraffe while he operated. He soon became involved in surgical procedures in the laboratories, including anaesthetics, as well as post-operative care for the animals.

Naki became one of four technicians in the research laboratory at the medical school. He assisted numerous young surgeons who spent time training in the animal laboratory to perform research—then transplantation of kidneys, hearts, and livers—and to obtain higher research degrees. Despite being listed in hospital records as a cleaner or gardener, he was paid the salary of a senior lab technician, the highest pay the hospital could give to someone without a diploma.

Because of the Apartheid system he was never able to train as a doctor, and was also barred from the whites-only operating theatre during this period of Apartheid.

Years later an ambitious doctor named Dr. Christiaan Barnard returned to Cape Town from the USA to develop cardiac transplant techniques and Hamilton Naki was employed. According to Barnard, Naki became extremely competent. He went on to lecture and train both students and professors on transplant techniques.

In 1967 Dr. Christiaan Barnard, of the same hospital successfully completed the first heart transplant on Washkansky. Washkansky lived for 18 days before dying of pneumonia. There has been conufsion about Naki's role in this event, which appears to have been overplayed in the years since. Naki is reported not to have been present at the transplant, forbidden by apartheid rules.

The process was assisted by hints from Barnard that Mr Naki had helped him in ways that were not fully known, and by the fact that, under Apartheid, any such help on white human subjects would have had to be secret anyway.

The University of Cape Town awarded him the degree MMed honoris causa,

Retirement

Naki retired in 1991 on a gardener's pension. He received some recognition of his work after his retirement, receiving the National Order of Mapungubwe in Bronze in 2002 and an honorary degree in Medicine from the University of Cape Town in 2003. During his retirement, he arranged for a converted bus to act as a mobile clinic for his home area, and supported a school in the Eastern Cape with donations collected from doctors he had trained. He died on 29 May 2005, aged 78.

Legacy

Despite his lack of formal training, Naki provided valuable training to thousands of student surgeons without receiving any formal acknowledgement. Barnard would later praise Naki for his role as a teacher and for his skills as a "surgeon". Barnard himself admitted before he died that "He (Naki) probably had more technical skill than I had". Indeed, he used this skill to become a trainer of over 3000 future surgeons, renowned for expecting high standards from his students. Meanwhile he would use his lunch breaks to read the Bible to the homeless people gathered in the local cemetery, and warn them against alcohol and cannabis.

See also

References

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