Doctor’s cutting-edge journey
Khayelihle Ngcobo beat the odds to become one of South Africa’s few black cardiothoracic surgeons
DR KHAYELIHLE Ngcobo has, against the odds, accomplished his childhood dream by becoming one of the few African male cardiothoracic surgeons in the country.
Ngcobo described his progression from being a rural boy to qualifying as a doctor as both challenging and fulfilling. He had to make a quick transition from rural schools to Pinetown Boys’ High – a former Model C school. His new teacher told him that he could not become a doctor because his results were not good enough.
“The first six months was tough, it reduced me to an average pupil, although I was an A pupil at the previous school. When I obtained bad results, the teacher would tell me I could never become a doctor. But that spurred me on to improve my work, because I could not imagine myself doing anything else besides standing next to a patient’s bedside,” Ngcobo said.
Ngcobo, who was born in Durban but lived at his father’s home at Umzumbe on the South Coast for 12 years, added that his mother’s boss, the late Brian Goss, played a huge role in his life. He said Goss paid his school fees at the new school, which his late mother, domestic worker Nontuthuzelo Muriel Ngcobo, could not afford.
“Goss treated me like his own son Rowan, who was the same age as me. We lived and played together. Rowan taught me English, while I taught him Zulu. It made my life easy when I joined the English-medium school in Standard 8 (Grade 10),” he said.
Goss fought for Ngcobo to be enrolled at the mainly white school in 1991. “He said Nelson Mandela fought for this country to be free. I was actually the first black kid at the school, but I was treated with respect by everyone, including classmates.”
Ngcobo’s upbringing was difficult, as his mother had 10 children to feed. He said enrolling for medicine at the Nelson Mandela School of Medicine was also a mission, because his family could not afford the R3 000 registration fee. With his A aggregate bachelor pass, Ngcobo had to wait for another year to enrol after getting a university scholarship.
His interest in becoming a doctor began when he was five years old.
“From the age of five, I remember always telling people I would become a doctor whenever they asked me.
“I rotated through almost all the medical disciplines as a young doctor and only later on did I realise that cardiothoracic surgery was what I wanted to specialise in.
“I wanted cardiology (I was inspired by Dr Brian Vezi, who I met as a medical student at Wentworth hospital), but I was a surgeon at heart, so I combined my love for surgery with my dream of cardiology.
“Years went by while I was not sure I wanted to be another black man tortured in the registrar programme, but my friend Basil Enicker, a neurosurgeon, was always in my ear. At the age of 37, I then began my cardiothoracic surgery training,” he said.
Before getting his first R6 000 salary as an intern at Prince Mshiyeni Memorial Hospital, Ngcobo bought a decent house in Marianhill for his mother and his sisters.
He said it was the best gift he could offer his mother, who spurred him on. Ngcobo was not put out when his colleagues laughed at him for not having a car. “I had to use taxis while paying for a bond,” he said.
Ngcobo, who works at Inkosi Albert Luthuli Central Hospital, wants Kwazulu-natal to have the best unit in the world and for it to get global status.
“We need the world to say that KZN has the best doctors in the field and a facility equipped with state-ofthe-art technology,” he said.