After briefly detailing the despicable living conditions of prisoners on Robben Island, the soft-spoken guide, a former prisoner himself, asked if there were any questions. One man, possibly in his thirties, said that he simply wanted to visit Nelson Mandela’s cell. “That’s not a question,” said the guide, calmly, “we will go there after as I’m sure most people have come here to see Mr. Mandela’s cell”.
Our prison guide detailing life behind bars
I had several questions bouncing around in my head but didn’t pose a single one. For starters, I felt slightly uncomfortable touring the prison with a group of thirty plus visitors (whenever I travel, I do whatever is possible to avoid being part of such groups but with Robben Island there was no alternative).
Also, the guide’s overall tone and body language gave me the impression that he wasn’t enjoying his duties. Bearing in mind that he spent almost a decade on the island coping with the cruel treatment he described, his manners were completely understandable. At any rate, I found myself tiptoeing around the older man, when under different circumstances we could have possibly had a wonderful dialogue. But the instant I overheard the man who pressed the guide about seeing Mandela’s cell say, “So I know you had to forget the outside world when you were in prison” and the guide’s irritable response of “what are you talking about?”, I knew better than to make any inquiries.
I had never visited a prison, much less one used to break the bodies and minds of so many freedom fighters. While the group was led to the section that Nelson Mandela’s cell is found, my friend and I lingered in the courtyard where he maintained a small garden (in his autobiography titled A Long Walk To Freedom Nelson Mandela discussed the time he spent gardening and the pleasure it brought him).
Wanting to have a quiet moment at Mandiba’s cell, we waited until our group finished viewing the main attraction before entering the wing. Standing in front of the tiny cage that he spent 18 years of his life in I had my friend film me expressing my thoughts on the moment. Not wanting to break down on camera, I stopped talking after a mere 40 seconds. I just couldn’t shake the image of Mandiba existing in such an inhuman environment all because he refused to live under Apartheid.
Mandiba's cell
When the prison tour was finished, we were driven around the island on a large bus . Speaking with a microphone, the young female guide explained that Robben Island was once a place where lepers and those labelled as lunatics were sent to. She also talked about the maximum security prisons that were used to house regular criminals. To think, I was surveying an island that for centuries was a place of imprisonment, banishment and isolation and that is today an intentionally recognized World Heritage Site.
The bus paused in front of the tiny house that Robert Sobukwe, former leader of the Pan Africanist Congress, lived in, under solitary confinement from 1963 to 1969. The Apartheid government considered Sobukwe to be the country’s most dangerous leader and went out its way to ensure that he wasn’t given the slightest opportunity to speak to a single prisoner.
While on Robben Island this was Robert Sobukwe's home
The guide indicated that as much as Sobukwe respected Mandela, he vehemently disagreed with his politics. As she spoke, I felt guilty about only knowing a few details about him and those were presented by Mandela in his book. She moved me when she, in a powerful storytelling tone, described how Sobukwe would communicate non-verbally to passing soldiers by taking sand in his hand, lifting it above his head and letting it fall through his fingers. Apparently, he did this to remind and encourage the prisoners to fight for a South Africa that belongs to Africans.
I’m certain that I wasn’t the only visitor desiring to step off the bus and take in the fenced off area while reflecting on the life of a man that was targeted by the Apartheid regime until his death in 1978.
Thus, following his release from Robben Island, he was kept under house arrest in Kimberley. Because he was a banned person, he could not be quoted in the media. Evidently, the government didn’t want his words reaching the people of South Africa or the world.
Robert Sobukwe
“World civilisation will not be complete until the African has made his full contribution…I wish to make it clear again that we are anti-nobody. We are pro-Africa. We breathe, we dream, we live Africa; because Africa and humanity are inseparable. It is only by doing the same that the minorities in this land – the European, Coloured and Indian, can secure mental and spiritual freedom. On the liberation of the African depends the liberation of the entire world.” Robert Sobukwe