Zikhona Valela is a historian, researcher and writer, author and consultant. She holds a Master of Arts in History which she obtained at Rhodes University. Valela has contributed writing for the Mail and Gaurdian, Daily Maverick, New Frame, Arts 24 and The Johannesburg Review of Books. She has contributed a chapter in the Charlotte Mannya Maxeke Institute’s anthology, The Women Before Us. She is the author of Now You Know How Mapetla Died: the story of a Black Consciousness marytr (Tafelberg Publishers).