Robben Island

     Finally after a number of false alarms, the exalted day when we could finally visit Robben Island arrived. The first trip was aborted due to inclement weather. Subsequently, the next scheduled trip was obstructed by a tearing storm and all boats were cancelled for fear of being ship-wrecked (just kidding!). The great day arrived. After a half of the day which was spent with the adorable people at the IJR, the seven of us who wanted to go to Robben, sneaked out silently, midway through the meeting. Since we had to depart from Cape Town, the following morning, this was our last chance to visit the Island. India has a similar prison complex, that has now been converted into a historical monument, and I was extremely excited about seeing this island. In India, the British government used to exile all the extremely intransigent political revolutionaries to the “Cellular Jail,” located on a group of islands known as the “Andaman and Nicobar Islands”, off the eastern coast of India. The practice of building political prisons on islands seems to be a common colonial tool of oppression and a common strategy of all imperial governments.

     Anyway, we finally set off on the boat with a lot of anticipation. I spent my time on the choppy journey on the top deck, spurning the comfortable company of the rest of the group who chose to sweat it out below the deck. The journey was delightful, with the exception of the slight feeling of sea-sickness. It was inevitable that thoughts of the political prisoners and their experiences of being sea-sick, the first time they were taken to the island and undoubtedly treated like chattel, seeped through my brains. I wondered how it must have felt to be cold and lonely and labeled a political prisoner for your ideals and castigated to an island far away from the rest of humanity. However, the beauty of the oceans and the sea lions flipping past briefly alleviated this memory. We finally arrived on Robben Island and were hustled into waiting buses, which offered a guided tour of the place. It was interesting to note the history of the island. It had only been used intermittently as a prison. It was a vantage point for positioning guns during the two World Wars, when South Africa fought on the side of the Allies. Apparently, one Dutch prisoner had tried swimming across the channel, at one moment in the 18th century when it was a prison, in an exuberant display of Dutch courage, only to be taken into custody when he reached the other side. It was momentous to imagine someone swimming across the cold ocean and braving the odds to liberty. The tour guide pointed out extant remains of an ancient gun from the First World War, and it reminded me of an era when the Island did not harbor oppression. It seemed inevitable that in such historical monuments, the untold history of the place weighs heavily on you and creates a deep impression. Your mind wanders unconsciously to the times when that place was a hotbed of oppression. The times of the oppressive imprisonment almost seems to recreate itself and nothing can shake of this memory of how the political prisoners were imprisoned for their ideals. There was a brief stop at a beautiful viewing-place that beheld a lovely view-with the oceans dashing against the coast and the blue-green water dancing in lovely fountains. We were also briefly shown the limestone quarry where the prisoners were allocated daily duties. At this point, the tour on the bus ended and our tour turned into a walking one and was taken over by a charming person, who spoke in a deep sing-song voice. We were told he was a former political prisoner. I found it absolutely incomprehensible that someone could continue to live in a place where they had experienced a lot of oppression. But I later on discovered that there was a deep fire of passion that survived the insurmountable obstacles that the apartheid government placed in its way. That fire had surmounted the everyday drudgery. It was incredible that the human spirit had triumphed despite all these difficulties and had been focused on the liberation struggle. Throughout the visit, songs of hope kept playing in my minds- or was it just my imagination? Somehow we wound our way to the grand spectacle of our visit- the cell which had hosted the imprisonment of Nelson Mandela. We were initially taken to the courtyard where the “prisoners” worked during their period of incarceration. It was poignant that this courtyard displayed a picture of the charming Mandela. The Mandela in the picture struck me deeply. The person displayed an intellectual air, which the atmosphere of the prison and its reprehensible treatment had not been able to discount. He was dressed in regular attire, with a jacket and shoes. Our guide stressed that this was just a camouflage and was a trick garnered to deflect international concern about the treatment of Mandela. He was given this attire only when it was time for a Red-Cross visit as normally, Black prisoners were not given any jacket or shoes. They were just given short-pants and a shirt, which was their attire, whether it was winter or summer. Mandela had spent twenty years of his life without shoes or a jacket. He was permitted contact with his family, only once in six months. Suffering from frequent bouts of homesickness myself, that was exacerbated by this visit to a country that was home to a large population of Indian origin, I was deeply saddened to realize this constricted contact with kith and kin. It was absolutely incredible that Mandela had survived all these tremendous hardship and had maintained his spirit and commitment to the freedom struggle intact. He had had no trouble, embracing the new generation of revolutionaries, something that was quite incomprehensible, as I came from a country where older leaders regularly repudiated the ideas of the younger generation. Here was a man, in the throes of the barest existence, and he had displayed an amazing intellectual commitment to his cause. It was truly inspiring! I also learnt that Mandela had been constantly studying and had managed to smuggle his autobiography out of this lonely island. I constantly pondered its implementation. Later on, I read that Mandela was presently holding on to his life against the attack of tuberculosis contracted as a result of the damp conditions on the island (the cells had no glass windows and rain and shine seeped in at will). It threw light on the wondrous human spirit which can never be affected by external difficulties. A little bit of illumination on ancient Hindu philosophy which held that the human soul was immutable! Hence, I learnt an I important and beautiful lesson- that the human spirit is eternal and undying and its sustenance marks the true success of any liberation struggle. The journey to the Isle of Hope, as I liked to call it, which displayed the beauty of the human spirit was the ultimate triumph in any movement for social liberation.

     Truly, this was a delightful trip and the highest point of our visit to Cape Town. It was a living example of “what makes movements move?”. Having been through Dr. Fosl’s deeply fascinating course on Social Movements in the Fall of 2012, this visit seemed a living example of the dynamism of social movements. Somehow that class had brought alive the deep and historical roots of social movements, their inevitable connections to certain vantage points of history and had emphasized that individuals and social events contributed to the sustenance and success of a movement for social change. Robben Island, and especially Mandela, and the other hundreds who were imprisoned there represented the indomitable human spirit juxtaposed against the historical circumstances manifested in the repressive apartheid government. Truly, social movements are sustained by the triumph of the human spirit despite insurmountable odds!