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