The Island is 10 km off the shores of Cape Town and is where both political prisoners and criminals were imprisoned during apartheid. The island had been used as various prisons by the colonial Dutch and English rulers, a leopard colony, a strong-hold during the second world war, and finally as a political prison starting in the 1960s. Mandela was imprisoned in 1962 and spent 27 years on the island.
The tour was given in two stages. The first was a bus tour explaining the history and various structures on the island including the town, where 200 people currently live, relics from the second world war, and various prison buildings. The second part of the tour was given by an ex-political prisoner and as our first tour guide pointed out, it must be very difficult for these men to come back to the island where they had been so injustly imprisoned and walk through those same hallways so that people can understand what happened.
During the first part of the tour we stopped in the village. The Robben Island museum workers have a choice of either living on the island or of commuting back & forth each day. Since people live there, they have a school house for grades one through seven and it currently has 18 students. There is also a church so that residents can worship. The Church is open to the public one day per year, on Valentines day so that people can get married. Last year they had 23 marriages on Valentine's day and our guide said he attended and the minister was on the mark when he stated, "Given that marriage is a life sentence, it's very appropriate to be married on Robben Island."
The highlight of the first part of the tour was when one of the other visitors asked the following question to the tour guide: "Do you think the English and Dutch Colonialists were the first terrorists?" The bus went quiet and the tour guide attempted to answer. Once he was fiinished, an older gentleman with dreadlocks asked if he could answer the question. He responded by saying that being a terrorist is in the eye of the beholder and that he had been considered a terrorist. He went on to say that it wasn't correct to be upset with what had happened because the actions were done in ignorance. His words were much more eloquent than my paraphrasing and it really stood out.
We were able to catch up with this gentleman later during the tour and spoke with him briefly. We expressed our appreciate for what he said and the sentiment within which he spoke. He told us that he works for the government on the mainland and is in "reconciliation and conflict resolution". He went on to say that you need to understand where people are coming from and how their experience shapes their viewpoint. One of his parting comments what that, "it doesn't really matter how you got into the water, but it's how you get out that counts."
The second part of tour was guided by the gentleman in the picture below. I cannot pronounce his name, let alone spell it, so we'll just call him Mr. K. Mr. K was imprisoned for five years on the island from 1986-1991. He had been given a 17 year sentence and as he said, he was not affected by the five years because he had set his mind to 17. He explained that he had been part of the African National Congress (ANC), which was the underground movement fitting against apartheid. He was imprisoned for being in the ANC, for working as military and moving various weapons and arms through the underground. He mentioned a number of countries that he had either been imprisoned by our deported from before finally landing on Robben Island. They included Namibia, Zambia, Mozambique, Russia and others.
He showed us the cell where they lived, including Mandela's cell below, the common area and the washrooms. He also showed us a number of items outlining how segregated the various prisoners were. First, prisoners were classified by skin colour, with Blacks receiving the worst treatment, and Coloured (defined as mixed race or anyone non-white) receiving slightly better. On the card below, it shows the food that was allocated to Blacks and Coloured and you see a marked difference. Whites were not imprisoned on the island.
Mr. K. also showed us where the guards had found Mandela's working copy of The Long Walk to Freedom, hidden under these grapevine trees. For writing the book, he was given 4 years of something (we didn't understand exactly what).
One of the surprising facts is that the prisoners were able to apply for education rights. Meaning, they could study during the evening hours after they had performed 8-10 hours of hard labour in the quarry. Mandela and the other prisoners coined this as "their university". We learned that the current President of South Africa was imprisoned on the island at a very early age and received most of his education this way -- pretty remarkable.
It was a wonderfully enlightening morning and we really enjoyed learning more about the history.
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