Robben Island is a place with a history of torture, illness, and imprisonment. As a former WWII garrison, a prison many times over, the solitary confinement place of Dr. Robert Sobukwe, and a forrmer leper colony, it is nothing if not another one of the world's oubliettes, a place where were disrobed of our humanity and annihlated one another, just like the slave dungeons on the West African Coast. What is it about this continent, these dark skinned tribes, that brought out the such fear, such aggression? All I could do while I was walking through the prison, listening to our guide, a former political prisoner at Robben Island having only been released in 1991, was marvel at the power of fear to rule over logic, rationality, morality, or even basic humanity.
Prisoners were given no shoes, no beds, no succor. Depending on your race or what part of the prison you were in, you may not even have been permitted to have cigarettes or jam on your toast. Beatings were the result of forbidden political conversations, and applause was hidden as the rubbing of hands. A simple newspaper was not allowed; prisoners slit open tennis balls and stuffed messages inside, lobbing them over the walls to each other, praying for perfect accuracy. And yet...
Nelson Mandela wrote his autobiography there, twice (the first one was found while he was writing it and destroyed). Many of the prisoners earned multiple degrees from the University of South Africa while there. It was the birthplace of the current South African government in that the first black politicians were almost exclusively ex-prisoners there. It is now a monument and a museum. People still live on Robben Island. Hope rears its head once again. There's something so audacious about it, so indomitable. Humbling.
This is not to say that South Africa's, indeed humanity's, long walk to freedom is complete, or even truly begun. But these ain't no baby steps neither. So to my South African brothers and sisters I say: run on.
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