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Some decades ago, a certain man died while being
like the proverbial banana peel. To go down in a hail
interrogated by the South African Police’s security
of bullets or be hanged by the neck until dead is
branch. That he had slipped on some soap in the
something. But to die as a result of a silly accident is
shower was the official explanation, just one of
to be stripped somehow of the last dignity afforded
many risible excuses offered by the police for the
one. In such cases, we quickly bury the dead and they
deaths of people in their custody. Some in detention
are soon lost to our collective memory. Paul Stopforth
‘fell down stairs’ or ‘leapt out of windows’, and ordi-
is one of the guardians of that memory, and he will
nary carbolic soap seemed peculiarly dangerous.
not allow us to forget.
Soap is not the stuff of martyrdom. It is slapstick,
LEFT: Paul Stopforth with one of his mature students, Catherine Krupnick. CENTRE & RIGHT: Installation views of Torture and Deaths in Detention, 1977. Mixed media.