Feb 6-07: The Real Africa #2

The second part of this incredible day was a late afternoon visit to Robben Island Museum. Robben Island was a prison island, and where many of the ANC political prisoners were held, and the most famous of these, Nelson Mandela, himself was incarcerated for 18 of his 27 years in prison. Since the 90s the island is now a world heritage site, and they run tours on the hour to the island. The island lies 12 kilometers off of Cape Town’s harbour, and so requires a small ferry ride – this is pretty fast and takes only a ½ hour. Once you dock, they pick you up by bus and take you on an hour tour around the island, which is surprising large.

The bus tour portion was really interesting, our guide talked about the history of the island, and its various components – it is actually quite a bustling community—previously the guards and their families living there (with a school, church etc.), which is now inhabited by the museum staff and families. The island also has a large penguin colony, and the little black and white creatures roam everywhere, along with a very healthy population of rabbits and springbok and antelope. Weird seeing penguins and rabbits sitting together, but then again, nothing is at all surprising to me in Africa anymore.

The island has a long history as a penal colony, as well as a leper colony, going back to 1658. Our tour guide was a lovely and articulate young man (studying South African culture and history and the university), who gave a very moving commentary as we drove around. You could have heard a pin drop in that bus, he had our undivided attention. Early in the trip he asked for everyone to call out the country they came from, and so people did this, and he would respond “Australia, welcome to the country…”, “Canada, welcome to the country…”, to each and every one. At the end of that welcome, he gave a very heartfelt thank you to all of us, telling us that the victims of apartheid knew what we did to help them in their struggle, and wanted us to know how grateful they were to each and every nation that supported them. He said all of it with such sincerity and generosity, it is a moment I will always remember.

One of our first stops was the cell/house of ANC activist Robert Sobukwe, where he was held in isolation for over nine years. He was originally incarcerated for 3 years, but upon his release, they continued to re-arrest him (on no charge) and imprison him again, so dangerous to the public order they though him to be. He lived in this shack, with a fenced in yard, for nine years, cut off from all other prisoners, and with the guards under strict orders to not talk to him. Near the end they had thought he was going insane, as he was talking to himself, however this was only thing that kept him sane until his release in 1969, where he remained under house arrest until his death in 1978.

We next visited one of the three quarries on the island, the limestone quarry where Nelson Mandela and 32 other ANC leaders laboured for over 13 years. The stone was supposedly for the roads on the island, but they quarried much more than was ever needed—much of the activity consisted of years of moving rock from one side to the other, and then back again, all in an effort to dehumanize and break their spirits. Limestone is a very bright coloured rock, and the lack of protective eyewear led to long-term vision damage in many of the prisoners, including Mandela himself. In the rock face there is a small “cave” that has been quarried out, originally about 17 meters deep. Here prisoners were forced to eat their lunch, relieve themselves etc. all in the same place. In later years it became a kind of ANC university where leaders were able to educate younger prisoners and each other, with the help of sympathetic guards.

As you leave the quarry area, there is a pile of small stones in the middle of the road area, a kind of rock cairn. Our guide explained that five years after his release, Mandela and the other political prisoners came back to the island for a memorial (probably when the island became an official museum in ‘96), and visited the quarry. At some point after the official ceremony was completed, Mandela split from the group, and had a few moments of solitary memorial by the cave. He then picked up a rock and placed it in the area, followed by all the other former prisoners who were in attendance that day. The cairn has been left untouched since, and stands as memorial to their suffering and triumph in that place. Although completely unremarkable, its simplicity is more effective than any huge bronze memorial could ever hope to achieve.

We then moved on for the second part of our tour, the maximum security prison, where Mandela and other political prisoners were held, along with a host of ‘regular’ criminals of all sorts. There were a number of sections, some single cells, some communal, and an isolation ward. Our guide was a former political prisoner, who was incarcerated in 1979 at the age of 15, and was imprisoned there until 1991, among the last of the prisoners to be released there. What struck me was his age, he is now 42, the same age as Karl and Jane and Steve, and only two years older than me. I think that shocked me most, the very recent nature of apartheid, and Robben Island, its so very new and lives and breathes still, as these people who suffered are still quite young.

He toured us through the various cell blocks, explained the daily life of prisoners, their activities and privileges, how they were able to communicate etc. One of my photos shows the daily menu (that never changed), which was based on race, on some misguided idea of the jail keepers. Our guide explained that they did have fruit and vegetables as well, which is not reflected on those lists. Over the years, prisoners engaged in hunger strikes, in order to gain improvements to their conditions (mattresses to sleep on rather than mats on the ground, glass for the windows, exercise privileges, heat) for which they were often successful. He said that prisoners gained an increasingly level of privileges – they were able to study by correspondence, and receive visits monthly as well, among other things. Although communications between wards was banned, they found ways to circumvent this, mostly passing information through the (prisoner) cooks and by inserting small notes inside tennis balls that they then threw into neighbouring blocks, this latter method never being detected by the guards. Exercise consisted of tennis, and football (soccer). And they worked 6 days a week, some inside the prison, some outside on the roads or in 3 of the rock quarries on the island. Our guide explained that there was never a killing in the prison, and no prisoner every killed another prisoner.

We visited the famous B-section, where Mandela and other ANC leaders were held, in tiny cells that measured 2 X 3 meters each. There was no plumbing, no toilets, no beds, they slept on mats on the floor. Their small exercise yard outside was completely cut off from the rest of the prison by a high stone wall, which was constructed by the prisoners, as was the tennis court that takes up much of this small area. Our guide explained how Mandela wrote his manifesto here, which he hid by burying it at the end of the yard, under the small vegetable patch that once grew there. When this work was finally discovered by the guards (not being it was smuggled out of the prison and off the island), Mandela lost all of his privileges and was sentenced to a long term in isolation.

The last part of the tour, your guide leads you into a hall area with benches where he tells his personal story. It was an incredibly moving tale, trying to imagine this young boy who had been trained by the military wing of the ANC and executed missions across the border from where they were based (in Botswana I believe). The last mission went badly, and 8 of their group were killed, and he and four others arrested. He was held in a prison cell for 5 months, and tortured daily. Finally he was indicted, and went to trial, he considered himself to be lucky to have been given a 25-year sentence, as many others were simply hanged. From there he went to Robben Island. Now he volunteers his days as a guide, and lives on the island. One of the group asked him if it was hard for him, doing these tours. He replied that “it allows him to never forget what happened” …and more telling that he has forgiven and “had made peace with his past some time ago”. Again I was floored by the ability to forgive, to move forward, to have hope for a better South Africa for everyone. But the existence of Robben Island will ensure that South Africa, and the world, never forgets what happened here.