The Maximum Security Prison
Once the bus tour is over, you make your way to the entrance of the maximum security prison where more than 3000 political prisoners were held from 1960 - 1991. If your tour guide on the bus wasn't an ex-political prisoner, your guide for this part of the tour will certainly be. It's quite an experience to be able to ask someone who lived through this experience personal questions. It's also nice just to shake a man's hand that has personally sacrificed so much for the freedom of others.
Our Guide
Our guide was involved in the Student Protests in Soweto during the 1970's and imprisoned on Robben Island in 1978. He was one of the last men to leave the prison when it closed its doors in 1991. I asked him if he felt somewhat comforted, once he was sentenced, by the fact that Mandela and others were already on the island. He said it made a small difference but Robben island had a reputation of being the worst prison in the country. He mentioned that the wardens at his trial had laughed and said "now you'll pay for what you've done" when they found out where he was being sent to. So, he was naturally afraid and apprehensive about Robben Island.
Prison Entrance
The tour starts at the entrance of the prison where the men were processed, given a set of prison clothes (shorts for black men, long trousers for Indians), and sent to their single cell or barrack. The offices of the prison include a prison "court" and a censorship office where every letter that came into, and out of prison was read. Our Guide explained that he used to write letters home with as much slang in it as possible so the censors couldn't understand what was written. When Mandela first arrived in prison, letters could only be written in Afrikaans or English.
Communal Cells
On the tour you will be shown into at least one of the communal prison cells. They put 52 men in one room and during the 1970's floor mats were replaced with hard bunk beds. You'll see the bunk beds and you can feel the blankets and mats. In one of the communal blocks they've kept an original sign which lays out the prisoners' daily menu. It's not so much that the rations are pitiful (which they are) but that different food portions were alloted to prisoners based on their skin color. One menu is laid out for "Bantu" and the other for "Coloureds/Asians". It is Apartheid at its starkest.
Clandestine Communications Between Prisoners
Our guide was just 18 years old when he came to Robben Island. He was young, angry and wanted to fight the system. He felt the younger generation had a more realistic idea of how entrenched the system of Apartheid was. While the older generation of prisoners like Mandela were busy trying to fight the unfair food-rationing and other prison policies, the younger prisoners wanted more stringent action against the wardens as gatekeepers of the Apartheid regime.Communication between the communal cells was strictly forbidden. Prisoners used ingenious methods to communicate with one another but this meant messages could take a week to travel between sections. Our guide said (with a smile) that the younger prisoners would take advantage of the slow communication and go on hunger strike before the others would have time to disagree with their actions. Because every action taken by the prisoners was unified, the older generation had no choice but to join their younger brethren. It is this type of insight into prison life that you can really only get from a person who has lived through this. Our guide's honesty was astonishing, there was no embellishment, just the truth.
Single Cells, Section B
Besides the communal cells at the maximum security prison there are single cells as well. On the tour you're taken to a cell in which Mandela spent a lot of time. But our guide explained that prisoners were often rotated through these cells for security reasons. The cell that you are shown has a blanket in it that the prisoners were allocated when they first arrived in prison. The blanket is thick and itchy. By the time Mandela left his single cell, he had accumulated a few books, a desk and a bed.
The Courtyard
The tour also includes a visit to the courtyard where Mandela later tended a small garden. This is where he clandestinely started writing his autobiography "Long Walk to Freedom". At the beginning of Mandela's imprisonment, the courtyard was a place for hard labor.
The End of the Tour
Guides accept tips at the end of the tour but they don't openly ask for them. Once the tour is over, you do get a chance to speak with the guide personally. I asked him how he felt when he returned to the island as a guide. He said the first few days were almost unbearable and that he'd underestimated how emotional it would be. He made it through his first week and has now been guiding tours for 2 years. He was actively recruited by the Museum. He chose not to live on the island like some of the other ex-political prisoners and employees of the Museum do. He said it felt too good to be able to leave the Island every day.After the maximum security prison tour you will walk back to the ferry dock and a loudspeaker will let you know when it's time to re-embark. You should have time to visit the museum shop.
Once you get back to Cape Town treat yourself to a nice lunch or dinner along the Waterfront and count your blessings.
