Zuleiga Adams

Zuleiga Adams is a historian and lecturer specializing in African and South African history. She has taught, designed and convened undergraduate and postgraduate courses in African history; the history of the apartheid city; gender and African history; race, culture and identity; memory, trauma and history. She has lectured at the University of the Western Cape and at Stellenbosch University, and is currently lecturing at the University of Cape Town. Between 2009 and 2011, she was awarded a Doctoral Fellowship from the Ford Foundation. In 2012, she was awarded a PhD in History from the University of the Western Cape. Her PhD thesis focused on the life of Demitrios Tsafendas, the man who assassinated Hendrik Verwoerd, the so-called ‘architect’ of apartheid, and explored the relationship between madness and politics in the history of South Africa. Her Masters research focused on the impact of the trauma of forced removals on the construction of memories about District Six. She has also done extensive research on the history of slavery in Cape Town. She has delivered a number of public talks and papers on Demitrios Tsafendas and on the themes of memory, trauma and history in relation to District Six.