Ever since I read Nelson Mandela’s book “The Long Road to Freedom” I have wanted to visit Robben Island where he was held as a political prisoner for 16 of the 27 years he was detained for his fight against apartheid. The visit today proved every bit as moving and in a way inspirational as the book – inspirational in the sense that despite the deprivation and physical hardship he suffered he saw his detention as but one stage in fight for freedom and he emerged without bitterness in 1989 to lead South Africa as its first African President.
So that I can bring you some pictures I’m going to split my description of the visit to Robben Island into a series of short postings.
Robben Island sits off the coast of Cape Town about a 30-minute ride by fast catamaran. ‘Robben’ is an old Dutch word for seal and today it is still home to seals, a colony of African Penguins and seabirds and is a conservation area for the rare ‘African Black Faced Oyster Catcher”.
The island has been a place of punishment for exiles and prisoners as well as a leper colony for over four centuries but became synonymous with the struggle against apartheid in South Africa in 1960 when a number of the most senior leaders of the anti-apartheid movement - including Nelson Mandela -were transferred to this high security prison that was in fact built by earlier inmates using local blue stone quarried on the Island.
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