Cape Town Mission Field 

    24 November 2018
   Day 350
Saturday

Today we stopped off at the office to pick up our passports to take the Robin Island tour. Turns out, they don't require passports anymore. They've added a short movie to the beginning of the line that speaks about the islands history. The timeline goes back to the 1600's when Dutch settler used the island as a place of banishment for those native chiefs that opposed the new world settlers. This continued through the English occupation. Then in the 1800's it began to be used as a dumping ground for lepers and criminals. In the early 1900's that was eliminated with the advent of the cure for leprosy. The mid-1900's saw political prisoners from the apartheid regime being sent to Robin Island and criminals were eventually moved to mainland prisons. There were several distinct sections all populated by prisoners according to their behavior. Some cells were single (mostly used to keep the leaders of the rebellion away from the general population) and communal cells housing upwards to 40 or 50 per cell. The prisoners spent 8 hours a day at the limestone quarry from Monday thru Friday. The records would show at any one time X number of prisoners + 1. The +1 was for Robert Sobukwe who had his own law passed for him proclaiming him a visitor. He was an organizer of uprising's and was isolated from the rest of the prison population. Jami was our cell guide and he was one of the High School uprising youth and at the age of 19, in 1976, was sentenced to Robin Island for demonstrations against the apartheid government. The last prisoners were released in 1994. Nelson Mandela spent 18 years here, 6 on the mainland prison, then the last two at the mainland prison in Paarl (about an hours drive east of Cape Town). The courtyard he spent time gardening in was used to hide some of the materials he wanted to sneak out and avoid being found by the guards who performed regular cell inspections. 

After we had lunch back at the V&A waterfront we took the Ferris Wheel ride overlooking the city.

Leaving the dock from the V&A waterfront

Maximum security wing

12 km back to Cape Town

Limestone quarry

Maximum security courtyard (1/2 hour exercise in the morning and evening)

Nelson Mandela's cell

Table Mountain view from on top of the Ferris Wheel