Before leaving for South Africa Blonde read Nelson Mandela’s fascinating autobiography Long Walk to Freedom. and found it to be brutally honest (about himself) and very inspirational. We had already planned to go to Robben Island when we went to Cape Town but now it seemed almost urgent to go there. As always Brunette did the research and found out that you need to buy tickets well in advance of when you want to go as it routinely sells out.
We knew the prison was no longer in use and that it had been designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1999. Here are the criterion UNESCO cited:
- The buildings of Robben Island bear eloquent witness to its sombre history.
- Robben Island and its prison buildings symbolize the triumph of the human spirit, of freedom and of democracy over oppression.
We were fortunate that on the day we had tickets the ferry made the trip. One or two of the previous days it had been cancelled due to weather. (They do refund your money if that happens but not for any other reason.)
The ferry was crowded and we were standing close to a group of students. Blonde was walking ahead of one of the girls when boarding the ferry and had the sense that the girl had lightly touched her hair. When she turned to look the girl said she had touched the hair and wanted to know if she could touch it more as she’d never touched or (possibly seen) blonde hair before! The girls were 14 year olds on a school excursion and very sweet and polite. We couldn’t figure out why Blonde’s hair was so unique as there are many Dutch Afrikaners in Cape Town with blonde hair. Maybe this girl just saw her chance to touch, not just look, but whatever it was it was cute.
When we got to the island we were taken on a tour by a former inmate. All of the guides are former political prisoners and the man leading our group had known Mandela.
The island has a lot of history that predates its role in the disgrace of apartheid. Supposedly the first inhabitants were from Vasco de Gama’s fleet in 1498 who stopped there in search of shelter and supplies. The Dutch were the first to establish a prison there and then for many years it was a large leper colony. No one seemed to have any cheerful ideas about the place!
On the tour we got to look into the small cell where Mandela was incarcerated for 20 years.
We saw the sleeping area for the inmates who were not in “private” cells. The conditions under which they were kept, the brutality of the guards, and the lack of any decent toilet facilities was appalling. It’s bizarre that a painting of Jesus is on the wall there – hard to imagine he would have been in favor of the place!
Then they drive you around the island in a bus to show you some other sites. You see the quarry where Mandela and many others – all Black political prisoners – were forced to break apart stone in scorching sun for long days. Having read his autobiography before going really added to the experience of visiting the place. In the book you learn about how he protested having to wear shorts when they performed the manual labor and finally got the “right” for them to wear long pants. He felt that the shorts took away their dignity.
The idea that Mandela emerged from Robben Island with a spirit of forgiveness and reconciliation is almost beyond comprehension. Blonde would have gone on a major ass-kicking spree.
This is one of the few places in the world we’ve visited that we don’t have any smartypants comments about! We did get very disgusted with a family who brought a boy who was more than old enough to know how to behave but behaved horribly the whole time. Even mild-mannered Brunette had all she could take and told the mother that the boy’s behavior was very disrespectful.
Maybe we weren’t ready for forgiveness and reconciliation ourselves yet!