Robben Island

[image error]Robben Island is known the world over as a place of banishment exile, isolation and imprisonment. For nearly 400 years, colonial and apartheid rulers banished those they regarded as political troublemakers, social outcasts and the unwanted of society to this 575-hectare rocky outcrop in Table Bay.

The Island's unwilling inhabitants included; slaves; political and religious leaders who opposed Dutch colonialism in East Asia; troublesome local Khoikhoi and African leaders who resisted British expansion in South Africa; Leprosy sufferers and other sick and the mentally disturbed; French Vichy prisoners of war; and most recently, political opponents of the apartheid regime in South African and Namibia.

During the apartheid years Robben Island became internationally known for its institutional brutality. Some freedom fighters spent more than a quarter of a century in prison for their beliefs. Yet people such as Nelson Mandela emerged to lead South Africa to democracy, with a message of tolerance, reconciliation and hope.

Those imprisoned on the Island succeeded in turning a prison "hell-hole" into a symbol of freedom and personal liberation.

Robben Island

While we will not forget the brutality of apartheid we will not want Robben Island to be a monument of our hardship and suffering. We would want it to be a triumph of the human spirit against the forces of evil a triumph of wisdom and largeness of spirit against small minds and pettiness a triumph of courage and determination over human frailty and weakness.

By Ahmed Kathrada, 1993 Imprisoned: 1964-1982 on Robben Island; 1982-1989 in Pollsmor prison