Dr Buhle Zuma, listed as 2011 Mail & Guardian 200 Young South Africans gave a debate at the Bloemfontein Campus on Thursday 26 March 2015. He shared the stage with civil rights activist and former Constitutional Court Judge Albie Sachs

Respondent to Judge Sachs

A former Mandela Rhodes scholar, and currently a young lecturer at the University of Cape Town's Psychology Department, Dr Zuma is particularly interested in issues at the heart of our rainbow nation . His research asks the question: What does it mean to be human for black people after centuries of dehumanisation? Dr Zuma also looks at the role of desire and fantasy in the political imagination of post-apartheid South Africa. He describes his developing thought and work as the Philosophical Psychology of Black Existence.

Dr Zuma was responding to Judge Sachs’ public lecture, ‘Sites of memory, sites of conscience’. This lecture is part of a series that focuses on how the creative arts represent trauma and memory – and how these representations may ultimately pave the way to healing historical wounds.

Vice-Chancellor’s Lecture Series on Trauma, Memory, and Representations of the Past

The lecture launched the Vice-Chancellor’s Lecture Series on Trauma, Memory, and Representations of the Past. It forms part of a five-year research project led by Prof Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, funded by the Mellon Foundation. The event is hosted by the UFS Trauma, Forgiveness and Reconciliation Studies.

Dr Zuma lives by the belief that, if he imparts what he learns and knows lovingly and creatively, the world will be the better for it.