Today, depressingly, is my very last full day of my seven month journey! I booked a ferry ticket to head out and see Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela and others were held as political prisoners for many years. The island name comes from the Dutch word for seal, so there were many seals as well as penguins about.
Robben Island lies just off the coast and can be reached on a 30 minute ferry ride. It has served as a defence post, leper colony, and prison for different eras in its history and now also serves as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Once we arrived on the island we were given an hour bus tour around the island before visiting the prison. On the tour we were shown a leper grave yard, military installations from WWII, and the living quarters of the staff who lived out there.
After that we were dropped off for a tour of the prison grounds. Interestingly, our tour guide through the prison had been incarcerated there himself for five years due to his political affiliations. The prison itself is not all that big and it was divided into sections for different kinds of prisoners, so political prisoners were kept separate from violent criminals. Also, prisoners were treated more harshly depending on the color of their skin and rations were more generous for lighter skinned inmates.
The political prisoners who acted as leaders of their political organisations were all kept together in the same cell block. Conditioned began to improve over the decades due to international pressure. We were told how prisoners would share information with other isolated groups by putting messages into tennis balls and then ‘accidentally’ hitting them over the walls to neighbouring cell blocks while using the tennis courts.
One of Nelson Mandela’s guards became a close personal friend of his and even served in his administration when he became president. He continued to live out on the island and run a coffee shop, but he was away on vacation when we were there.
Nelson Mandela’s cell was shown with the few items of furnishing prisoners were allowed to have: a thin mattress, a metal bowl, a metal cup, a small table, and a trash can. For nine hours every day all prisoners who were convicted to hard labor would have to mine a limestone quarry on the island. It was just mined for satisfying the hard labor requirement and the lime was often just dumped in the ocean overnight.
