STIAS has learnt with sadness, of the passing of Noel Chabani Manganyi, an outstanding psychology scholar, author and education administrator. He was 84.
Manganyi spent time at STIAS as a Fellow on several occasions between 2012 and 2015 where he was conducting research and writing his memoir Apartheid and the Making of a Black Psychologist (2016). He was also a member of the STIAS Effects of Race research project along with a group of other Fellows who are specialists in sociology, philosophy, anthropology, education and law. The project has since produced a series of edited volumes namely, The Effects of Race (2018), Race in Education (2019) and Persistence of Race (2020).
“His impact on the initial ideation of the project was profound. This was because of what his body of professional and life experience as a clinical psychologist brought to the project, and because he understood clearly how government policies affected people in their day-to-day lives,” fellow group member, Nina Jablonski said.
“He was never offhand or casual in his discussions of the institutional racism or oppression because he had seen in his own patients the tragic and indelible unfolding of these practices on the trajectories of human lives,” said Jablonski.
“Chabani brought his professional experience into his roles as a public educator and leader, and to the Effects of Race project. He instilled in the group an appreciation of the psychological dimensions of public policy and of the importance of education in the development of an informed and psychologically unburdened citizenry”, she added.
“Having a deep understanding of the personal effects of racism, including those caused by race labelling, he understood how individuals and societies could, eventually, be freed from its shackles. He also fully understood that the process of cutting the chains of race concepts and racism would take generations of concerted effort,” Jablonski said.
“He was a quiet and reserved man of great depth and sincerity, for whom the word, desist did not exist,” she said.
Another member of the group, Crain Soudien described Manganyi as one of South Africa’s most important social scientists. “I first encountered him when I was writing a doctoral dissertation on the impact of ‘race’ on young people’s identities in the early 90s. His Treachery and Innocence: Psychology and Racial Difference in South Africa published in 1991 was deeply important for what I was trying to do,” Soudien said.
“He had by then already established a formidable scholarly reputation but with Treachery and Innocence he opened up a vein of thinking about the relationship between structural factors in society and psychology which took the best of global psychoanalysis and grounded it in the realities of South Africa”, he said.
“In the process he not only disrupted my own determinist Marxist understanding of society but fundamentally put the fields of psychology and sociology on notice for the essentialist ways they came to corral and, actually, close down explanation of the complexity of oppression and subordination,” Soudien added.
He went on to say: “He helped us see, for example, the fixed ways in which we came to look at questions of social difference and urged us to understand the socio-historical contexts of people’s lives in much fuller ways”.
“What a privilege and an honour it was then to have him as a direct colleague at STIAS in the Effects of Race project. We were able to work together for five wonderful years. He came to our annual gatherings with utter humility but left us all deeply aware of how much there was to learn
about the good and bad ways in which ideas and analyses shaped our understandings of race and social difference”, Soudien said.
“His passing is a moment of great sadness for us and the wider psychology community around the world. He wrote prodigiously, however, and so, fortunately, leaves behind a rich archive filled with provocative insights with which we can work productively and generatively for many years,” said Soudien.
Gerhard Maré, another member of the group first encountered Manganyi through his writing,
Being Black in the World (1973).
“This book, along with Rick Turner’s Eye of the Needle, was influential amongst student activists and organisations who were grappling with finding oppositional space in apartheid South Africa,” he said.
“These were seminal books that demanded thinking and active involvement. I was fortunate in that, decades later, I would again benefit from Chabani’s presence (now in person) and his further incisive writing,” said Maré.
Maré spoke of a conversation he and Manganyi had one winter evening, as the Effects of Race group project came to a close. It would be the second-to-last conversation the two have.
“Chabani asked me to come and talk with him in his flat, with a roaring fire going. He was planning to set off, traveling by road from Stellenbosch to Gauteng, very early the next morning.
Among what we discussed was the importance of driving the roads of South Africa, experiencing natural and social environments along the way,” he said.
“We talked about how that experience appeared to be so foreign to how politicians and many others travel and how traveling by air helped to remove awareness and direct confrontation with such key aspects of things happening ‘on the ground’ around the country,” said Maré.
“For several years I had the pleasure of the person Chabani Manganyi, a calm conversationalist; the intellectual reward of his reflective and challenging mind; and then, engagement with his way of communicating his ideas and responding to those of others”.
Another STIAS Fellow and member of the Effects of Race group, Njabulo S. Ndebele said of Manganyi: “From time-to-time good fortune brought us together”.
“Our last significant moments together were when both of us were at STIAS as part of The Effects of Race project. STIAS was, for both of us, a perfect place to be where as always, he exemplified a scholar who lived the classic “life of the mind”.
“We were steady friends who met through the Black Consciousness Movement in the 1970s to which he contributed seminal thoughts,” Ndebele said adding: “Before then we had also spent time at Yale University’s Southern African Research Programme (SARP) in the 1980’s.
“I will always remember him as a kind friend and rigorous scholar with whom many hours of camaraderie and conversation are unforgettable”, said Ndebele.
STIAS is privileged and proud to be associated with the work of one of South Africa’s leading intellectuals. Manganyi’s quiet presence carried gravity and when he spoke, the room listened. We will miss his presence and his wisdom. He was a solid, exceptional and convivial African scholar. May he rest in peace.
See the work of the EOR project here: https://stias.ac.za/fellows/projects/effects-of-race/