ROBBEN ISLAND

Since 1997, Robben Island has been on the World Heritage List. Essential for understanding the still recent history of the country, this visit is a highlight because of the solemnity of this site where hundreds of people died. The rock, located 9 km from the port of Cape Town, housed, between the 17th and 20th centuries, a prison, an asylum, a leprosarium and a military base before becoming, from 1963, a high-security prison. Most of the rebel freedom fighters, Hottentots or slaves, were actually the first political prisoners in the country!

A bus takes you around the island. The island is surrounded by a large maritime zone designed to protect the only colony of 140,000 African penguins and the 60 species of birds. The bus stops at the lime quarry, where Mandela and the other prisoners had worked hard with burnt hands and eyes. The visit continues in the heavy atmosphere of the prison halls and near the football field, the only leisure allowed. The guide, a former political prisoner, recounts the intense experience. You visit Block B, the very high security block for political prisoners, and the tiny cell where Nelson Mandela spent 18 of his 27 years in prison, escaping by thinking and writing. Illiterate and illiterate people were coming out educated, like the former President of the Republic, Jacob Zuma, who entered in 1963 and left ten years later. It is regrettable that the visit is taking place on the spur of the moment...