Hamilton Naki; S. African helped in first heart transplant

CAPE TOWN -- Hamilton Naki, a former gardener who was so skilled in complicated surgery that he helped in the world's first heart transplant -- but had to keep his work secret in apartheid South Africa -- has died. He was 78.

Mr. Naki, a black man who left high school because his family could not afford the fees, started cutting grass at the University of Cape Town at age 14. The university, where he worked until his retirement in 1991, announced his May 29 death on its website. No cause of death was listed.

In 1954 he was promoted to helping care for laboratory animals and progressed from cleaning cages to more advanced lab work after a professor at the university asked him to help anesthetize animals used to train students in surgery.

''He has skills I don't have," Dr. Christiaan Barnard said in 1993. ''If Hamilton had had the opportunity to perform, he would have probably become a brilliant surgeon."

Barnard asked Mr. Naki to be on the backup team in what became the world's first successful heart transplant, in 1967. It was in violation of the country's laws on racial segregation, which dictated that blacks should not be given medical training or have contact with white patients.

Mr. Naki was especially known for teaching medical students to perform intricate liver transplants on pigs, a procedure said to be more complicated than human heart transplants.

Doctors who observed Mr. Naki's work used to describe how he managed to join minute blood vessels together with amazing delicacy and accuracy.

Ralph Kirsch, head of the Liver Research Center, described him as ''one of those remarkable men who really come around once in a long time."

By the time he retired, he had only made it to the level of lab assistant, and he had to be content with the meager pension of a gardener, since his more skilled work had never been made public.

It was only after the demise of apartheid in 1994 that Mr. Naki's contributions became known. He received the country's highest order for his years of public service.