Post-apartheid fraternity, post-apartheid democracy, post-apartheid sexuality: queer reflections on Jane Alexander’s Butcher Boys

With your permission, then, these three permanent residents of the South African National Gallery in Cape Town. Their mother – if you would prefer to call her that – is South African artist Jane Alexander (Powell and Alexander 1995). They came to life in 1985, at a time of turmoil and during a state of emergency in their country of birth (Bedford 2008: 125). Some will say that they have long been dead, and others that they never really lived. In the main room of the gallery they sit next to each other on a modest wooden bench, overlooking from three different directions the daily comings and goings of visitors from all over the world who have come to the national gallery to see them. Collectively, they are called The Butcher Boys.