From the Slums of Soweto to World-Class Heart Surgeon

has taken him from the slums of Soweto in South Africa to his position today as a world-class heart surgeon in Washington, D.C.

 

Included along the way were the brutal beatings and hackings of his fellow students by tribesmen at the University of Zululand, the scars he still carries from his bitter struggle against apartheid with other grade school students during the Soweto uprising, the years playing piano to pay for his college education and the reunion with a father he had not seen since he was 2 years old.

Mcunu, an assistant professor and director of Cardiac Services at Howard University College of Medicine and Howard University Hospital, has now chronicled his odyssey in his first book, Zulu Chest Cutter: From the Slums of Soweto to Success in America.

Mcunu, 48, said he wrote the book in large part for his children, who listened to the stories of his childhood in awe and with some disbelief.

"I wanted them to have all the stories, all the facts, because their existence has been far removed from the world I grew up in," he said.

Growing up under the yoke of apartheid in the slums of Soweto, a suburb of Johannesburg, S.A., was tough. He recalls how his single mother always worked at least two or three jobs so the family could have enough to eat. 

"Sometimes, I would be going to school and she would be just coming in from work," he recalled.  "And when I was getting home from school, she was going to work."

To help out, he began working at age 8 and never stopped, he said.

Through all his difficulties, one of the main driving sustaining forces was his mother.

"I had a mother who was willing to invest in the one thing she could, to inspire me to get an education," Mcunu said.  "The message was pivotal in getting me through the streets.  My friends would be doing drugs and I never would.  I never wanted to break my mother’s heart."

Though he was a straight A student in South Africa, he still had a difficult time in America. Xavier was the only school in the United States to admit him and give him the economic support he needed to attend, he said.

"Howard turned me down," he recalled with a chuckle, "but then it was the only place that accepted me to medical school."

Mcunu said he was able to survive the hard times because of one trait.

"The biggest thing is tenacity," he said. "Regardless of the challenges you face, if you persist, you will triumph.   It doesn’t matter where you begin, but where you end."