Professor Noel Chabani Manganyi, who has died at the age of 84, was a torchbearer in psychology, literature and African intellectual thought.
He was the first registered black clinical psychologist trained in apartheid South Africa, and among the first black South Africans to achieve this level of academic qualification in psychology. At the time, access to higher education for black South Africans was severely limited.
Manganyi was known for his commitment to the advancement of psychological sciences and fight for justice during apartheid. Apartheid was the South African government’s policy of racial oppression, enforced from 1948 to 1994. It entrenched a social, economic and political hierarchy that privileged white South Africans and subjugated Black or Native, Coloured and Indian communities.
