Robben Island Matters
Robben Island is a reminder that even the darkest storms will pass. The place became synonymous with the brutality of the South African apartheid regime because it combined physical labor, isolation at sea, and constant psychological aggression designed to dehumanize the prisoners. The latter were forced to work at a lime quarry in inclement weather, received differential treatment based on race (Black africans received worse rations than, say, Asian prisoners) and solitary confinement was common for “high profile” inmates.
While the island has operated as a place of banishment for about 400 years, from 1961 to 1991 it was mainly used to hold anti-apartheid activists. This included high-profile leaders, student activists (such as the ones involved in the Soweto Uprising) and guerrilla fighters captured during armed struggles. One of those high profile leaders was Nelson Mandela.
Out of Mandela’s 27 years behind bars, 18 were spent on Robben Island. This was the most grueling stretch of his sentence: He was held in the infamous B-section in a 5-square-meter cell where he had to keep a small wooden table, a stool, a thin bed mat, and a ceramic bucket for waste. He was forced to work at the quarry for 13 years, where he suffered an injury that left him unable to cry with tears for the rest of his life. As a Black African, he suffered the worst of the dietary discrimination: He was denied bread and any meat that landed on his plate was of the kind that guards deemed unfit for themselves. His correspondence was censored and redacted to the point that sometimes the only parts left were the salutation and the signature. Possessing a newspaper was a punishable offense. He had to sleep on a thin sisal mat until his health began to decline significantly.
Despite “all the bludgeonings of chance,” he didn’t come out of that terrible place to lead South Africa into a campaign of retribution that would have sparked an endless vicious circle of angry racialism. He saw the promise in reconciliation. He didn’t simply switch seats with the oppressor; he saw the removal of oppression as a critical goal of statecraft. In many ways, the famous poem he used to recite falls short: not only did he come out of darkness with a head bloodied -but- unbowed; his head was way up above the storm clouds. Even during the darkest times of his incarceration, it is said that he used his legal training to advocate for better conditions for his fellow inmates and that he teamed up with other educated activists to turn the place into what prisoners called “the university”. Secret classes that ranged from literacy and history to political philosophy were organized, effectively turning a site of deprivation into a crucible for the future leadership of a democratic South Africa.That’s what it took to win a Nobel prize back then: this kind of unwavering commitment to rising above the storm. This utter dignity.
And so the walls that took away so many of his best years are worth keeping to remember his struggle. The struggle of many. They are not a simple reminder of cruelty or retribution; they matter because they are a much needed memento of dignified resistance.
