Robben Island
Posted: 2/28/2005 10:30 PM (Permalink)
Our last day in South Africa we went to Robben Island, the famous island 12 kilometers off the coast at Cape Town which is known best as the place where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned.
Robben Island is an extremely popular tourist destination. We had tried to reserve a trip out there when we first arrived at the beginning of January, but found it booked solid for almost two weeks. Luckily, we had some time before our flight out of Cape Town so long as we went on the early trip. This meant leaving Stellenbosch early in the morning and running into Monday morning rush hour traffic.
We almost didn’t make it to the boat for our scheduled departure time.
After a 20 minute boat ride, we got off an boarded a bus for the first leg of the tour. The prison compound is just a small part of the island. There is also a church, a conference center, a hospital, a civil defense base and the old guard barracks. Also there is a quarry where the prisoners did their hard labor.
Notice how bright it is. Our guide told us that the brightness contributed to lots of eye problems amongst the prisoners who spent every day out here digging. The rock from the quarry wasn’t really used for much. They used it as a means of breaking down the will of the prisoners. The large hole in the middle was used as a latrine and, since the guards wouldn’t go in there, it was also used as an impromptu classroom for the prisoners to exchange ideas and study trades and so forth.
The prison complex itself has a great gravity to it that was undiminished even by the joviality of the large number of Filipino tourists in our group. Interestingly enough, the guides (or at least our guide) is a former political prisoner, so he was able to give a first hand account of what life was like there. These are the halls in which Mandela and many other political prisoners spent the better part of their lives walking.
One of the cell blocks had an interesting setup. Each cell had a picture of its former inhabitant along with some text or an audio tape describing some aspect of life in prison and some object that had special meaning like a pair of sneakers or a hair brush or a trade school diploma earned in prison.
The prison is of course no longer in use, but there is still a lot of activity going on. The Island is designated as a UN World Heritage site. As I mentioned, there is a conference facility on the south end of the island that has hosted international dignitaries. It offers nice views of Cape Town.
There is also a large variety of bird life on the island including a colony of penguins in residence, though we didn’t have time to go out and see them. Here are a bunch of cormorants hanging out on the wave break instead.
The whole trip took 4 or 5 hours. It was a memorable experience.