Eastern Cape Bloodlines I: Assembling the Human

Abstract

This is an article less about red as installation, colour or symbol, and more about assembly.1 I have used Red, the installation by Simon Gush, as provocation to think of exhumation, its work and processes of assembling–disassembling– reassembling.2 The particular exhumation discussed here involves the mortal remains of five anti-apartheid activists recovered at Post Chalmers outside the rural Eastern Cape town of Cradock in July 2007 by the Missing Persons’ Task Team (MPTT).3 ‘Topsy’ Madaka and Siphiwo Mthimkulu, and Champion Galela, Qaqawuli Godolozi and Sipho Hashe (the ‘Pebco Three’) were killed in April 1982 and May 1985 respectively by Port Elizabeth security police, who thereafter burnt the bodies.4