More than eight years ago the Psychology Department of Rhodes University initiated an award to honour prominent members of the psychology community in South Africa for their contribution to social change in various fields of practice. The Psychology and Social Change Award is intended to

The first person to receive the award was Noel Chabani Manganyi. Aesthete, quiet yet incisive political observer, university leader, educationalist, and of course eminent psychologist, Manganyi would have been my choice, too, for an award such as this. And for many others – if we had them.

The man has had many achievements in his long life. However, it is the numerous adversities he has confronted and overcome that seem to have shaped him, as someone with an irrepressible point of view in a world that not only repressed men and women like him, but as often jailed, banned, or killed those, like him, who stood against apartheid. As for achievements in the field of psychology, Manganyi was the first to plant a seed for the growth of a psychology of black being. Over a period of just under two decades, in addition to numerous academic articles, he published his ideas in several books concerning blackness and racism. Among the works in his oeuvre are Being-Black-in-the- World (1973), Alienation and the Body in Racist Society: A Study of the Society that Invented Soweto (1977a), Mashangu's Reverie, and Other Essays (1977b), Looking through the Keyhole: Dissenting Essays on the Black Experience (1981) and Treachery and Innocence: Psychology and Racial Difference in South Africa (1991). How incredible is it that Manganyi's work does not form the core of the ‘psychology of race and racism’ curriculum?