Robben Island

October 15, 2019

By Hector Gonzalez

October 16^th, 2019

We took the ferry out to Robben Island, the former prison where South Africa kept its political prisoners. We took off from the heart of Cape Town's touristy waterfront, and headed to a place that had once been the site of grotesque human rights abuses.

Leaving the city behind.

The captain said, a bit sarcastically, "And now I release you to Robben Island."

The island is mostly abandoned now. We took a bus tour first before heading into the prison.

This is the limestone quarry where Mandela and the other leaders of the anti-apartheid forces worked breaking rocks. The cave was their toilet and informal meeting center (since the guards refused to go in to what was a smelly hole). It was there that the rebels sketched out what would become the constitution of the future democratic South Africa.