Draft:N. Chabani Manganyi



Noel Chabani Manganyi was born and raised in Louis Trichardt, present day Limpopo, a traditionalist, rural and non-literate countryside community in the 1940s. Hi is known as South Africa's first black psychologist. Besides being known for clinical psychology, Manganyi was a writer, theorist and intellectual activist during the apartheid years in South Africa. Manganyi is also known for his acclaimed roles as Director-General of the Department of Education from 1994 to 1999 as well as the Vice-Principal of the University of Pretoria (UP) from 2003 to 2006. Manganyi is well known for his published monographs, of which Being-black-in-the-world (1973) and Looking Through the Keyhole (1981) are the most famous. Mangany is work look at institutionalized racism in South Africa and how it influences the internal and external realities of South Africans. His works are influential because they study the difficulties in developing identities in an oppressive society such as apartheid South Africa and helped non-white South Africans process the injustice of being oppressed. Manganyi is also known for advocating for a more generalizable South African psychology that makes mental health care more accessible and appropriate for South Africans.

Academic Background
Manganyi finished his schooling primary schooling at a Swiss Mission boarding school after which he completed his secondary schooling at Douglas Laing Smit Secondary School at Lemana. After finishing high school, Manganyi completed his bachelors degree at the University College of the North, majoring in English and Psychology, in 1962. Thereafter, he completed his honors degree in Psychology over a two year period in 1963 and 1964 at the University of South Africa in Pretoria and immediately thereafter his Masters degree at the same university in 1969. After his strenuous academic career, Manganyi did not stop there. In January 1969, Manganyi was admitted as the first ever clinical psychologist intern at Baragwanath Hospital (now Chris Hani Barawanath). After a duration of four and a half years of working at Baragwanath Hospital, Manganyi, registered for doctoral studies at the University of South Africa and completed his doctorate on 'The body image of paraplegic' under the supervision of Professor A.S. Roux, only to obtain his DLitt et Phil in Psychology in 1970. Manganyi's aspirations as to Psychology did not stop with his DLitt et Phil and rather extended to him completing his post-doctorate fellowship at Yale School of Medicine from 1973 to 1975 in the United States of America. After which, Manganyi returned to South Africa to pursue a career in writing and anti-racism activism.

Awards, Honors and Achievements

 * Honorary Fellow of the Psychological Society of South Africa


 * Humanities Book Award, Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf) (2018)


 * Lifetime Achievement Award, National Research Foundation (2016)

Published Work
It is upon his return from the USA that Manganyi really set out to stand up to the injustices of apartheid South Africa. Through his writings, poems and monographs as well as during his time in the 'free' America, Manganyi could both make sense of the years of oppression that he experienced in his home country, and advocate for those that have experienced the same. During this time he published many works that subjected on racism, institutionalized oppression and the alienation that it leads to in the identity formation of many 'black' South Africans. His works include :


 * A fictionalized memoir, Mashangu’ Reverie (1977).


 * Alienation and the Body in Racist Society


 * Psychobiography and the truth of the subject (1983).


 * Being-black-in-the-world (1973).


 * Looking Through the Keyhole (1981)