At 8:30am Meg, one of the employees of 2waytravel, picked up my roommate SarahCatherine and I at our apartment. A group of Boston College students were/are in Cape Town for a volunteer trip, about a week and a half, and we planned to meet up with them to visit the District 6 Museum and Robben Island.
First, we went to the District 6 Museum. For those of you who are unaware, before apartheid District 6 was a thriving cultural part of Cape Town. However, as segregation and apartheid became prevalent, blacks and coloureds were forced from their homes to townships and eventually the entire district was destroyed. Now, the land has yet to be used for anything except to add a little green to the city. The museum is on part of the district, but otherwise the land is in limbo as former residents are applying to the government to reclaim the land they once called home. The museum is a place for former residents to share their pictures, stories, and objects with the rest of the world. In the middle of the building is a large hand drawn map of District 6.
Former residents come and sign the map where they used to live and many have drawn in their shops and other landmarks that had been important to them. Along the edges of the building is the history of the district along with pictures and artifacts from the former residents. There are multiple artistic projects created by residents along with old street signs hanging from the walls.
From the ceiling hang cloth pictures of important resident of the district and at the back of the room are quilts made by residents, along with a large tower of streets signs, built above a mound of dirt from District 6. Among many other things there is a long cloth that former residents had signed in marker, which have been stitched over so it never fades, and a second cloth for visitors to sign if they have been touched by the museum. One of the girls from the volunteer trip signed the cloth for BC.
As we stood there admiring our schools signature, another student pointed our direction to another message written a little farther down on the cloth. It was a message written by the first lady herself. And here, below, is that exact message.
The museum was beautiful. I felt like I was in the memory box of an unsurpassable amount of people, all having added bits and pieces of their lives to project. It was a privilege to have been let in to such a significant memory of the past. I got the shivers walking around and taking in the life of the vibrant community and yet the hardship that could never be forgiven or forgotten.
After the museum, we drove to the waterfront. SarahCatherine and I separated from the group and enjoyed burgers on the water, bathing in the sun as we watched seals swim around the water below us, and listened to the music of a water taxi docked at the nearby ramp. As the sun grew hotter the rest of the BC students met us at the clock tower. From there we made our way to the boat launch for Robben Island.
Unfortunately, by the time we boarded the boat the decks were full and we were forced to sit inside the boat. We enjoyed an informational video about Robben Island and the people who occupied it, and arrived at the Island within twenty minutes. SarahCatherine and I took no time boarding a tour bus, getting separated from our group in the mean time. Nonetheless, the choice was a wise one. Our tour guide informed us that many of the other tour guides were young and naïve, only driving from spot to spot to let the tourists out to look around. Our guide let us take stops, but didn’t let us get out. Instead, he made it his mission to incorporate the home country of all the tourists on our bus into the history of South Africa and better yet how these countries eventually led to the political imprisonment of many people on Robben Island.
We saw…
1. The Leper Graveyard—Robben Island had previously been home to those inflicted with leprosy so as not to infect the rest of the population.
2. The house/imprisonment room of Robert Sobukwe—the founder of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) and the only prisoner in solitary confinement. Our tour guide informed us that he never had visitors and thus his vocal cords had hardened when a visitor came at last, because he had been alone so long, never talking. He also informed us that he communicated with the other prisoners with hand signals when he was out in his garden.
3. Multiple churches
4. The house that has been recently built for the governor to stay in when he visits—Hilary Clinton also stayed here on her visit to the island
5. The actual town—about 150 people are currently living on the island
6. Views of Cape Town from across the ocean
7. An old pub where guards used to hang out
8. A cannon built for WWII that was not completed until after WWII
9. One of the Lime Quarries—this particular quarry was the one in which Nelson Mandela worked. Our tour guide explained that the sun shone so strong off the lime that many workers became blind, while sunglasses were not provided until much later. Nelson Mandela’s tear ducts can no longer produce tears and he therefore cannot have flash photography taken of him.
10 And finally, the maximum security prison that had been home to all the political prisoners before the prison was closed in 1991.
This time, we got a tour of the prison. I leapt off the bus and the group was greeted by a jolly looking man with a bit of a belly, his Robben Island Museum shirt tucked into his pants, and sporting a baseball hat. He was an ex-prisoner. The man told us he was arrested in 1976 and sent to Robben Island. He explained that while he was a political prisoner, he was not as big a threat as others and was therefore placed in a communal cell, whereas leaders such as Nelson Mandela were housed in single cells in a different block. He pointed out his cell window to us as he explained a bit about life in prison.
They were only in their cells from 4pm-6am, otherwise they were outside doing work on the island. To keep themselves sane the prisoners participated in poetry readings, dance, song, and recreational sport. A bit of information that came as a shock to me was the fact that they were tortured. Our guide shared that one man he knew died of torture because he would not reveal any information. They also smuggled in political readings and newspapers, along with communicating with the leaders in the single cells by sending messages through the cooks, who worked in all the blocks. Next, our guide walked us around the prison. He showed us the communal cells that held up to thirty people in bunk beds (mats were used until 1974) and through various courtyards to the many blocks within the prison. He told us how much the prisoners hated the mailroom because they opened all the letters the prisoners received and showed us the place where prisoners were tried for various crimes while in prison.
Finally, he brought us to a special courtyard. Along the edges was a garden where all the political readings and things smuggled into the prison were hid in bottles and cans, and the corner where the prisoners dumped their bottles of waste at the end of the day, though they carried it with them all day long for bathroom purposes.
And of course he pointed out the fourth window from the left…Nelson Mandela’s cell.
At last he brought us down the corridor, and showed us Mandela’s cell. It had been set up to look like what it would have looked like when mats were used; there was a trashcan, bedside table, and mat with blankets. And that was it.
I hugged our guide goodbye as he showed us the way back to the boat. As we walked back in the blazing sun I couldn’t help but think about what our bus guide had explained to us; the ex-prisoners cannot find jobs. They are undesirable for work and therefore fall in with the rest of the 45% of the Captonian population that are jobless. A bright side to this misery is that many of the ex-prisoners have become employed by the museum and every six tour buses employ another ex-prisoner. So people, make your way to Robben Island!
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