Robben Island

Sunday, April 22: With a small boat, we leave the Cape Town Waterfront (an unbearably touristy place) to Robben Island- the island where the prisoners of apartheid were held, a “maximum security prison” that is now turned to a World Heritage Site. I am looking forward to this visit- Robben Island has been one of the very first things I ever heard about South Africa. About how cold the sea is, and the currents that you can get caught into and never be able to swim away. About the prisoners’ lives most of them saying that the thing they missed the most on the island was the sounds of children- life was unbearable without the sounds of children.

The first part of the visit is disappointing. We’re being toured on a bus, we can’t get down and walk and see and sense things for ourselves. “Here is the lime-queary”, “here’s the leppers’ cemetery”, “now you can get off the bus for 3 minutes to take your pictures of sea shore facing Cape Town”…. I catch myself being more anxious to take pictures of things than actually see them. On the boat and on the bus I am thinking about what it is to be a tourist, what are tourists (these creatures with the shorts and the cameras, making plans for the next journey while the first hasn’t started yet, insatiably greedy) made of? I don’t want to be a tourist anywhere.

Next it’s the prison cells. At last we get to walk on our own feet. We’re being guided by a former prisoner but he sounds like he’s memorized whatever he says. Still, the site is heart-gripping, you can’t be but silent and respectful. Big prison-cells for about 50 people. Small prison cells for one. The small ones are 1×1 with a tiny window. Impossible to move. “The watch-dogs had more space than the prisoners” said the driver. The prisoners sleep either on the floor, on very thin mats or, in the big cells, in beds one on top of the other. They were all wearing shorts- the island gets extremely cold in the winter, it was already chilly the day we went, on April. The guide told us about a hunger strike they once did. After 20-something days he was so weak he could not go up the 3 steps of the little ladder from the bottom to the top bed so he took his blanket and fell on the floor.

On our way back I am sitting next to a couple of young black South Africans- they are in their 30s, seem to love one another deeply (you can tell by the familiarity that they talk to each other, the little casual moves that they do with so much tenderness) and talk very lively in their own language. But every now and then they switch to English so I overhear to find out what they’re talking about. They’re having a heated discussion about the politics of apartheid (the woman says at some point with passion “they hated us. they hated us”), what kind of their history they’re showing to the visitors (”it’s all Mandela, Mandela, Mandela”), what they know of their own history…The discussion is passionate, it lasts throughout the trip. I am in the South Africa I came for.

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