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Race Otherwise: Forging a New Humanism for South Africa is a small contribution to the significant work of the Apartheid Archive Project established in 2008. This project is dedicated to the collection and analysis of ordinary South Africans’ narratives of everyday experiences of racism under apartheid. While formally housed at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, it is a transnational, trans-institutional and interdisciplinary project.

I walked a ‘long way through the chairs’ (Travis Lane 1993) with these pages. For most of the first half of my life, words were wounds. The late Gerrit Huizer, my doctoral supervisor at the University of Nijmegen in the Netherlands, helped me heal words and love them. The late Vernon February, my host at the Afrikastudiecentrum, University of Leiden, introduced me to him.

Dan Ncayiyana is the ‘archangel’ who stood next to me. Crain Soudien, Pamela Nichols, Garth Stevens, Kira Erwin, Walter Mignolo, Njabulo Ndebele, Nina Jablonski, Lewis Gordon, Catherine Walsh, Barnor Hesse and Peace Kiguwa read drafts and gave me their thoughts. I thank them.

Renee van der Wiel brought me books I never knew existed. She walked with me through the creative process.

Paul Gilroy gave me guided reading that changed my scholarly life. The W.E.B. Du Bois Institute provided a time of reflection. The Academic and Non-Fiction Authors Association of South Africa provided much needed initial funding and encouragement for this writing project. Norman Duncan, Nazeema Mohamed and Tawana Kupe were instrumental in bringing me to the University of the Witwatersrand. The Wits Transformation Office and its Carnegie Equity Fund, administered by Hugo Canham, invited me into the warm and vibrant embrace of Wits University in 2011. Sharon Moonsamy welcomed me warmly into the Emthonjeni Centre. At the University of Cape Town, Danie Visser, Crain Soudien and David Cooper kindly put my scholarship before their institutional desires. The Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study gave me concentrated quietude and a whole new scholarly community. Without the patience and generosity of the Faculty of Humanities Research Committee and the Mellon Programme for Advancing the Professoriate at Wits University, my way through the chairs would have been longer.

Thank you to members of my family who kindly assisted with information about the photographs reproduced here. SunMedia, Sage, Berghahn Journals and Transformation kindly permitted the reproduction of parts of previous publications.

Marion Wertheim, Shireen Ally, Crain Soudien and Zetu Makamandela-Mguqulwa gave me courage when I needed it. I also thank my friends Rejane Williams, Tanya Chan-Sam, Edmarie Pretorius, Srila Roy, Bridget Kenny and Laurel Baldwin-Ragaven. Special thanks to Pervaiz Khan for long conversations, for sharing literature, delicious meals, laughter, tears and more.

Monica Seeber weighed each word and sentence for its meaning. The book is here because of Roshan Cader and Veronica Klipp of Wits University Press. I extend my gratitude to the anonymous readers for their valuable commentary. I am especially honoured by the reader whose incisive scholarly critique urged me to reconceptualise the initial manuscript. Some of the detailed information about my family pictures comes from the family genealogy on geni.com, managed by Herbert Walton. I am privileged to have had the meticulous editorial attention of Karen Press.

Zimitri, Johannesburg, 2017