Cape Town, Sat. Feb 13, 2010

Today we went to Robben Island.  It is a small island off the coast of Cape Town.  Robben means "seal" in Dutch.  This island has had many uses over the years.  It was a leper colony, an insane asylum, a military defense base in WW II, and most famously, as a prison for criminal and political prisoners.

We took a bus tour around the island to learn the history, then we were dropped off at the site of the prison where we were lead on a tour by an ex-polital prisoner.

The stories he told were very interesting and moving about how the highly educated political prisoners began teaching the guards and even the criminal prisoners about their ideas of equality and what their vision of the world was.  The guards had to be changed out from the island frequently because the easily became sympathetic to the positions of the political prisoners.

Conditions were as terrible or worse than in any other prison in the 1960-1970s.  Unfortunately, these conditions continued into the 1990s, when the last political prisoners were released and the criminal prisoners were transferred out.  The island was declared an historical site and is now open daily for tours to learn from and not forget what went on here.

The island's most famous prisoner was Nelson Mandela.  This was his cell where he spent 18 years of his 27 years in prison.  For more interesting facts on Nelson Mandela, visit Wikipedia and consider reading the book Invictus.

The view of Table Mountain from Robben Island.

We then visited the Company Gardens, founded by the East India Company.  It is a very large and lovely garden walk area with many museums and government buildings that front the park area.  We are standing in front of South Africa's oldest synagogue, founded in the 1800s.

Across the street from the Company Gardens was the High Court building.  We noticed these benches in front of the court entrance.  Note they still say "Whites only" and "Non-whites only".  The benches have been left as a reminder of Apartheid times.

Sarah sitting with a local man.  She was worried that she would get into trouble for sitting on this bench. He assured her it was fine now.

Interesting information at the court building on "race classification".  Based on characteristics and skin color, you were classified as a certain race.  This meant that siblings that looked different could actually be a different race.  It was yet another sad reminder and smacked so much of Nazi Germany... other than the killing part, of course.  Well, at least officially...