I am not a number; I am a free man,” protested “The Prisoner,” the central character in the eponymous 1970’s television series. The series was set on an island from which prisoner number 6 — held for an unspecified offence — continually tried to escape. Ever trying to establish who was “number one,” he invariably failed and returned to his luxurious prison. As the TV series occupied the attention of millions, on another all too real island in cell number five, another prisoner occupied very few people’s attention; though physically constrained, he too was in every intellectual sense, a free man.
Prisoner 46664, Rolihlahla Dalibhunga Mandela, occupied Cell Number 5 in the Robben Island High Security Penal Colony for 18 years. The TV series is long gone, but cell number 5 attracts thousands of tourists annually. Some go simply to tick it off their list of places to see. Most though approach the simple grey box with, if not a sense of reverence, a reflective contemplation that once it held the “number one” most recognizable man in the world and all he is seen to stand for.
The island and its most famous resident have reached iconic status over the last quarter century; the longer history of the island though is shot through with pain, captivity and oppression by colonial powers.
The island took its name from the seals that used feed and breed there. “Robbe Eiland” was the Dutch name which meant “Seal Island.” When first seen by Europeans, thousands of seals lived there along with penguins, tortoises and birds. For nearly 400 years, Robben Island, 12 kilometers from Cape Town, was a place of banishment, exile, isolation and imprisonment. It was here that the rulers sent those they regarded as political troublemakers, social outcasts and the unwanted of society.
In 1488, Bartolomew Diaz, a Portuguese explorer, dropped anchor in Table Bay and saw, among other things, Robben Island. Portuguese sailors in the 15th century as well as British and Dutch colonialists and traders used the island as an outpost and prison for many years. By 1591 the Island was being used as a holding pen for the native Khokhoi and San herders who for centuries had herded and grazed in the Cape and now saw their existence threatened by the new settlers.
With the arrival of Dutchman Jan Van Riebeeck in the Cape in 1652, the island became important as a revictualling stop for the trade routes from Europe to India and the Far East. As the Cape area developed, the island was used to mine stone for the mainland building boom which was causing a violent reaction among some of the local indigenous population. Some of these dissenters were the island’s first prisoners. Autshumato, the first political prisoner on Robben Island, contended that he had been returning cattle which had been unfairly traded by European settlers. He was also one of the very few prisoners ever to escape from the island.
A new group of prisoners arrived later in Robben Island - the political leaders of anti-Dutch movements that opposed Dutch rule in the East Indies. Kings, princes, and religious leaders were all convicted and sent to the island.
In 1795 the British brought 150 years of Dutch rule in the Cape to an end by attacking Muizenberg and Simonstown. Robben Island proved useful to the British as well for constraining army deserters, murderers, thieves and political prisoners. The 1800s saw extended conflict between the Xhosa people and the British government over the issue of land. “The Hundred Year War,” as it was called locally, saw most of the Xhosa captives taken to the Island where they lived in rudimentary tents until houses were constructed in 1863. The homeless, prostitutes with sexually transmitted diseases, alcoholics and even people who were too old or sick to work, were classified as lunatics and dumped on the island. They lived under the same harsh conditions as the prisoners and received no treatment for their illnesses.
The 1900’s brought change to Robben Island; by the 1930’s the lepers had been taken to hospitals on the mainland. The population fell from a few thousand to a couple of lighthouse keepers. In 1936 just before WWII, the defense force took control of the island. New roads, power and water supplies were installed and weapons mounted. Robben Island was still seen as an ideal place for prisoners and after the military left, in 1961 prisoners returned.
In 1948 the National Party in South Africa passed the Apartheid Act. Suffice it to say that the inequities generated by the law, based purely on racial premises, resulted in a powerful and eventually successful backlash by the majority of the population.
From 1948 many organisations set up in opposition to apartheid. Many members and leaders of these opposition groups found themselves arrested, detained, banned, and eventually under house arrest. Thousands lost their lives because of their resistance to the law. In 1949, a year after the National Party came to power, the African National Congress Youth League was born with a campaign of defiance. Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu were the organisers; both eventually were imprisoned on Robben Island.
The final collapse of the apartheid system and Nelson Mandela’s release and subsequent political life have given a new lease of life to the island. Rather than wipe out the brutal history of the place, the island has been developed into a museum, left much as it was when its most famous prisoners were there.
At face value, it is an abandoned prison. Institutionally clean with grey and white corridors and intimidating steel bars and doors, grey slate facings on the walls and grey stone guard towers, even in bright sunlight it exudes threat. Adding to the impression of implacable inflexibility of the authorities in control, no curves relieve the harsh straight lines of the buildings. The “welcome” sign that arriving prisoners saw as they left the outside world - sometimes for the rest of their lives - was a singularly cruel gesture.
Walking through the corridors on a quiet day only hints at the oppressive claustrophobic potential of the place where everything needed permission and where refusal became a weapon. Nonetheless, the prisoners organized their own social system and hierarchy, maintaining their own discipline and spirit. Looking at the bleak conditions, the visitor can only wonder at the tenacity and inner strength that kept them sane.
A courtyard surrounded by high walls sports a patch of garden in one corner - tended by Mandela - and used by him to conceal notes for his later book. Outside the prison compound, there is a blindingly white quarry where prisoners worked, breaking out stone and shifting it endlessly from one pile to another and back again. Many years working there caused eye problems to the prisoners, Mandela included.
The guides, most of them ex-prisoners, explain that they are open to questions but that there are some they choose not to answer. These are few and far between and they’re happy to discuss how they came to be incarcerated and their experiences in captivity. Understandably, there is a residual bitterness in their voices when you hear stories of the authorities manipulating correspondence with the outside world and the forms of physical and psychological punishment that were meted out.
Nelson Mandela’s cell is the final stop on the guided tour. Exactly the same as a hundred others, it triggers a sense of wonder that anyone could survive intellectually in such a confined and sterile place. Many did.
Robben Island has a terrible and desperately sad history. On a more positive note, the political prisoners from the apartheid era succeeded in their demands for educational correspondence courses and ironically, their prison warders joined them in learning.
It gives pause to reflect on the later transition to majority rule and the true wonder of that transition; it was done with little or no bloodshed or recrimination against the former rulers. It was in these bleak grey cells that the seeds of that transition and eventual reconciliation germinated and grew. The visitor leaves the island in a deeply thoughtul yet positive mood; here is the physical remains of a history that we sincerely pray will never be repeated.
