Hamilton Naki - Who of us shall tell his STORY.

www.hidden-heart.com

South Africa

Did you know that a black man, Hamilton Naki, played a major role in the first human heart transplant in 1967, but was forced by apartheid South Africa to pretend he was just a gardener? Yet, without Naki's surgical skills, that medical breakthrough might not have happened.

Hamilton Naki had no formal training in medicine, but he is one of Africa's best-kept medical secret. Thirty-seven years after the first human transplant that propelled the South African surgeon, Christiaan Barnard, into the limelight, the truth about Naki's role in that groundbreaking operation is finally coming to light and his achievements are now the center of several accolades.

While most people associate Dr Christiaan Barnard with the first successful human heart transplant in 1967, the role that Naki played at the Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town - on that momentous day and subsequent years - was kept secret. Those who attempted to reveal his crucial role were threatened with imprisonment.

"Naki was a surgeon - a pioneering surgeon considered by colleagues to be the most technically gifted of the entire Hospitals medical team. Without him, the transplant might never have happened," The Guardian added for good measure.

Naki's story is one that exposes not only the worst ills and dehumanizing schemes of the apartheid regime, but also proves how insecure members of the white-only government were towards embracing black people who were more intelligent and better skilled than them.

"Two men transplanted the first human heart. One ended up rich and famous - the other had to pretend to be a gardener."