Day 235: Robben Island

Robben Island, just off the coast of Cape Town (in Table Bay) is where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for 18 years.  A bit of trivia for you: He served 27 years in total, but only 18 were spent on Robben Island. In case you’ve been living under a rock, Mandela was the first black president in post-Apartheid South Africa. He was followed by Mbeki (who resigned due to corruption charges), Motlanthe (who served in the interim) and now, the current president, Jacob Zuma. Both Motlanthe and Zuma were imprisoned on Robben Island as well.

Our trip began on the sun deck of a smaller speed boat to the island. We chatted with a fellow American, Gregg about his trip (a bucket-list trip for his father and a few of his friends) and exchanged stories from our own travels.

When we arrived on the island, we boarded a bus that came with a guide who told us about the island’s history. Early Dutch Settlers initially used the island as a prison, then for awhile it was a leper colony, an animal quarantine station, it was fortified during the Second World War, and around that time went back to being a prison.

We drove past a leper cemetery, and past the quarry where the prisoners worked while serving time. A pile of rocks was pointed out to us towards the entrance to the quarry. During a reunion visit, Mandela silently took a rock and laid it there. Other former prisoners followed suit. It’s now treated as a memorial to their imprisonment.

Three of the four post-apartheid South African presidents (even though one was not elected) were imprisoned for ten years on Robben Island. When we toured the prison, our guide was also a former prisoner. He described the prison to be more like a school. The more educated prisoners taught the lesser educated ones. There was always an open dialogue and many prisoners walked out with the equivalent of a university education because of it.

We were in a pretty large group, perhaps about forty people or so. I often trailed behind so I could take pictures of the prison without anyone lurking in my shot. Because of this, I couldn’t always hear what the former prisoner had to say. I also couldn’t stop wondering what would make him return to the prison to give tours after being imprisoned for ten (maybe more? maybe less) years there. I don’t think I could do it. Below is Nelson Mandela’s window out to the courtyard, the interior of his cell, and the hallway of his prison wing.

Prison has to be bad. Twenty seven years of it can’t be easy. But we’ve seen quite a bit of bad things on this trip (and for me, even more in past travels). I was kinda picturing something along the lines of the slave quarters that we visited on Zanzibar, a type of prison where slaves were kept before being sold at the market. Obviously, it was a lot longer time ago, but it was the most recent type of prison, so that’s what came to my mind when we arrived on Robben Island. I’m also rather sure that an empty, clean facility now, several years later is much more attractive than it would have looked back when there were prisoners. But, I couldn’t help thinking that their conditions really didn’t look that bad. Again, this is coming from someone who in the back of her mind was thinking back on the Vietnam War Museum in Saigon, or the Killing Fields in Cambodia, or even the daily poverty in India and in some of Africa…

At this point, as I was photographing the empty hallway, I realized I could no longer hear the tour group. I had passed the door to get out of the prison wing and started to panic slightly that I might be lost inside. This panic was equal annoyance at myself for needing to lag behind to take a few photographs.

“Great.” I thought. “I’m lost. in a prison.” I rolled my eyes at the thought and tried to find my way out. I found one door that led to yet another courtyard. I tried to listen for the group. I still couldn’t hear them. I opted for another door that looked as if it continued to lead outside, rather than back in. I was in Another courtyard, but this time I could hear voices. I quickened my pace and found a few other stragglers talking to our guide, and Andrew waiting with an expression I’m all too familiar with. It’s the face he makes when he’s lost track of me and he doesn’t know whether to be concerned or annoyed. I popped out of the door and told him I got lost. He rolled his eyes, none too surprised.

Back on a different (bigger, less charming) ferry boat back to Cape Town, we chatted more with our new friend, Gregg. He invited us out to lunch with his father and his father’s friends. Not yet sure what we were going to do with the rest of our day, we accepted and had a really lovely lunch! Gregg warned us that we would have to field a lot of questions and we’d probably have to entertain his company, but we enjoyed it and had to laugh when they expressed gratitude no one in their family was traveling for as long and to as many places as we were.

“What do your parents think?” They demanded. We laughed and explained, after living abroad for so long, they were probably used to it. We told them about couch-surfing and shared our funnier and scarier moments of the trip, and then thanked them over and over again for lunch. (Really, thanks again, Gregg and family!) I cannot express how much of this trip is owed to generous people we have met along the way. A free night’s stay, lunch, a drink, even to borrow a cell phone every now and then. I need to make a “Thank You!” page just to give you a glimpse of how fortunate we’ve been to come across so many wonderful people around the world.

Day 225: Apartheid Museum

The Apartheid Museum  tells the story of the era of Apartheid in South Africa. If you’re unfamiliar with Apartheid, the word is Afrikaans, and as you can see below (in a picture I was not supposed to take), the definition is  “the status of being apart.” It became the term for the system of racial segregation enforced in South Africa between 1948 and 1994. If you want to know more about it, check out the wikipedia page all ’bout it.

It’s intense. The museum is intense, and I’m sure very thorough, but to us, it felt a bit… poorly organized. There is so much information and some really great – REALLY GREAT – media and photographs and imagery, but multiple times, Andrew and I weren’t sure where to go next or what made sense chronologically. We might be a bit daft, but after spending over two hours in the museum, I’m still not sure of the chain of events leading up to apartheid and what led to ending it. I cannot stress enough how much information is there, and how everyone visiting Joburg should go, but maybe spring for a guide who knows the lay of land a little bit. And maybe plan for more than two hours, because that was not nearly enough time for us.

Day 224: Liliesleaf Farm

Liliesleaf Farm is probably not the first thing that one thinks of when discussing Apartheid. I knew nothing about it, until Andrew discovered it was one of the top rated things to do on TripAdvisor in the area we were staying. We went and learned that it was a farm used by the ANC (political party in South Africa that defines itself as the “disciplined force of the left” and has been the ruling party since post-Apartheid South Africa) secretly during Apartheid in the 1960s. It was here where 12 activists were arrested, leading to the Rivonia Trial where 10 of these activists, ANC leaders, including Nelson Mandela were tried for attempting to overthrow the apartheid system.

It was interesting to see that a white family in the middle of Apartheid was pretending to live on a farm while hiding members, leaders of the ANC while they met. It reminded me a little of the Underground Railroad in the States during slavery (except this house was just for meetings, not smuggling people) and it just really surprised me that this was going on not so long ago. I’m always a bit befuddled when I hear about inequality. It gets me quite ranty and those who are friends with me on Facebook have probably hid me by now from their feeds (as they should) when someone tries to justify inequality.

On the farm, there was also an old safari bus that was used to smuggle weapons into South Africa for the ANC. Unsuspecting tourists provided a believable cover for the safari bus full of weapons. They showed a video of the tourists- more recently- being told that the bus they were on was smuggling so many weapons. It warmed my heart when some of the tourists, aside from being shocked, said that it might have been the best thing they’ve ever done- and it was done unknowingly.

Apartheid is gone, technically in South Africa, but the differences between races in the country were glaring to us as outside visitors. Domestic servants not only seem to be ONLY black women, but it seems that there is some underwritten requirement that they have to wear a maid’s uniform that reminded me of the Mammy archetype in old movies. Along the streets, we would see domestic servants walking to work. The only white people walking on the street seemed to be us (the few times we were walking somewhere). Whenever we interacted with a black person, it was because they were serving us to a some degree- they were the ones behind a deli counter, at the cash register in the super-market, our waiter at a cafe… It made me (and Andrew) feel uncomfortable. One time there was a white person working behind a counter and I immediately identified that that wasn’t exactly of the norm, and again, felt strange for noticing. It just felt strange.

I’m not pointing any fingers, I know change doesn’t happen overnight, and I certainly know that life must be better than it was during Apartheid days, but the differences we noticed, perhaps as Americans with a history (and a continued battle) with inequality, and after traveling through Uganda, Tanzania, and Mozambique, where everyone was black (except for those visiting or the white Portugese in Mozambique) it felt strange.  Tony and Raquel, both Portugese (Tony being Portugese-South African) told us that they weren’t characterized by the color of their skin, they were, to other South Africans, “Portugese.”

The strangeness continues…

These books are a memorial to those who lost their lives during the days of Apartheid. I thought they were so beautiful against the bright blue sky, don’t you?

Afterwards, Tony picked us up for dinner and we arrived to an abundance of food that Raquel had prepared for us. Thank you, so much to both of you! It was so fun hanging out with friends, that we had known prior to stepping foot in the country and being able to talk about everything from annoying tourists (Anya, I’m looking at you!) to South African politics to Mozambican economics to traveling through Laos… It made me wonder what conversations would be like over dinner back in the States.