Robbens Island

Nelson Mandela lived in this cell, B block, cell 5, for almost 20 years before being moved to another prison in Cape Town where he stayed for several more years before being released in the early 90s.

We went to Robbens Island and it was the most emotional part of our trip so far.

You take a half hour boat ride out into the harbor to the Island which has sparse vegetation and must be cold as hell in the winter.

The view of Cape Town is great, but its hard to look at it and not think of what this view looked like to the prisoners who lived on this island for years without hope of getting off.

 

South Africa is a wonderful country and its frankly hard to reconcile the niceness of the people with the pain and suffering that went on here so recently.  It’s also a reminder that many countries still practice the hate and segregation that South Africa has moved away from.