Hamilton Naki is dead. I learned about it in this week's
Economist Obituary. I didn't know who he was before reading this story. He lived in South Africa during apartheid, and was a brilliant surgeon. But he was black and nobody was allowed to know, so officially he was the gardener.
He was part of Dr. Christiaan Barnard team who performed the world's first heart transplant. But he didn't receive any credit at the time, although privately he was treated well: Look, we are allowing you to do this, but you must know that you are black and that's the blood of the white. Nobody must know what you are doing.
His is the story of a modest, hard-working, selfless, deeply religious man, who in spite of everything stayed cheerful and happy:
He took it well. Bitterness was not in his nature, and he had had years of training to accept his life as apartheid had made it. On that December day in 1967, for example, as Barnard played host to the world's adoring press, Mr Naki, as usual, caught the bus home. (...) Because he was sending most of his pay to his wife and family, left behind in Transkei, he could not afford electricity or running water. But he would always buy a daily newspaper; and there, the next day, he could read in banner headlines of what he had done, secretly, with his black hands, with a white heart.
