Being black in the world

N. Chabani Manganyi is one of South Africa’s most eminent intellectuals and an astute social and political observer of his time. He has had a distinguished career in psychology, education and in government, and has written widely on subjects relating to ethno-psychiatry, autobiography, black artists and race. Being-Black-In-The-World, one of his first publications, was written in 1973 at a time of global socio-political change and renewed resistance to the brutality of apartheid rule, including the Durban strikes of 1973 and the emergence of Black Consciousness. Publication of the book was delayed until the young Manganyi had left the country (to study at Yale University) as his publishers feared that the apartheid censorship board and security forces would prohibit him from leaving the country, and perhaps even incarcerate him, for being a ‘radical revolutionary’. Like Fanon in Black Skins, White Masks, Manganyi expressed the vileness of the racist order and its effect on the human condition