Robben Island sits in Cape Town’s Table Bay. Originally it was habitat for avast numbers of Cape Seals (the name is derived from the Dutch word for ‘seal’) and African Penguins. When the seal population had been hunted to extinction, the island became the site of a leper colony. After the discovery of the cure for Leprosy, the island and the colony were abandoned. During World War II, a military base was built on the island but again it was abandoned after the war. Finally, in the 1950’s, the South African Government established a prison on the island. Initially, the prison was used for the detention of regular prisoners but, early in the 1960’s, they began housing political prisoners on the island. Ultimately, the regular prison population was relocated off the island and Robben Island Prison became solely a prison for political prisoners. The most famous of its inmates was, of course, Nelson Mandela.
Robben Island Prison was closed in 1990 and five years later, by vote of its former inmates, it was turned into a museum.
Our third South African tour began with a short ferry ride to the island. After disembarking from the ferry, we boarded a bus for a quick tour of the prison grounds …
The prison church, where guards and their families worshipped …
The school, where the children of guards attended …
and the island’s lighthouse.
Then we were taken to one of the quarries where the prisoners were forced to labor. Note the cave which was the prisoners only shelter from sun or rain.
Five years after the prison was closed, former inmates held a reunion here at which they decided that the former prison should be turned into a museum. To commemorate their reunion, each attendee placed a rock on this pile in the quarry where they were all forced to labor!
Finally, we climbed off the bus and walked into the prison proper.
We were greeted by our guide, a former inmate of Robben Island.
He explained that the prison was divided into four sections and each section had four buildings of cells, two buildings of group cells holding 30 – 50 prisoners each and two buildings of solitary confinement cells. Until 1984, all prisoners slept on mats on the floor. In 1984, under pressure from the International Red Cross, inmates were provided bunk beds in the group cells and cots in solitary. The group cells had access to showers and toilets. Inmates in solitary were forced to use buckets.
This is the cell where Nelson Mandela spent eighteen years of his life.
Finally, upon returning to the mainland dock, the clouds lifted and we were able to clearly see Table Mountain above Cape Town. Note the ‘bump’ on the right side of the mountain’s plateau. That is the gondola terminal.
