Robben Island

I think Robben Island is about four miles from mainland Cape Town. The way you go there today is by boat through the Robben Island Museum. Distance-wise, it is not that far from the mainland but for some reason, it felt like the longest boat ride of my life. There is something about this place of terror and oppression that makes it different from the others. Robben Island was a place in which the apartheid government could hold those it deemed "enemies of the state" away from South African society with four miles of water to keep them separated. A place where many black people suffered tremendously. Where some, would never return from.

When you go to Robben Island through the museum, you get a very special perspective added to your trip. Your tour guide will be someone who was a former prisoner when it was operational. This is a very unique and powerful perspective. Our guide was a man who went to a protest in his high school years and because of that, he was arrested and sent to Robben Island for five years.

This is the entrance to Robben Island prison. As you walk through the prison halls, you see the harsh conditions that prisoners were put through. When you hear and read testimony, you learn how experiences on the island were made to be even worse than designed. It is a place where for many, the punishment was far bigger than the crime. Going through the island, one can understand why many hold resentment towards South Africa. It is a suffering beyond what a person can imagine unless they have experienced it. 

What was interesting was that our tour guide knew Nelson Mandela. He casually pointed out where his 'buddy' Nelson sat in prison. I wonder what it's like to know one of the 20th century's greatest statesmen at what may be the lowest point in their lives. There is something about the cold and the gray walls of the prison. How one could spend more than a day there, I will never know. Even with the desire to escape, you simply could not. On the off-chance you break out of prison, you then would have to swim to mainland Cape Town where if you managed to make it there, there may be some people expecting you. But, the coasts are difficult, the waves are strong, and the water is always cold. When asked if anyone escaped during the apartheid era, the guide told me "the thought never escaped our minds." In a disturbing way, Robben Island was the perfect prison. 

Robben Island leaves a disturbing reminder as to what happens when we let radicals take over our politics and corrupt our systems so that opposition to them is a damning offense. This isn't a lesson just for South Africa; it's a lesson for the world.

It makes a great physical reminder because from Cape Town, if you look out to sea, there is a good chance you will see the island. As I leave the island, I reflect on the pain that took place on the grounds that I walked on. Who was locked up there? What did they do to be put there? Who never got to leave the island? Can we stop something like this from ever happening again?