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South Africa
This picture shows View of Robben Island from a distance. It was taken on a travel to Cape Town, South Africa, Africa. It is one of the 8138 of travel photographs you can find on Traveladventures.org. You can click on the picture to see more pictures of Cape Town. You can also send it as a free electronic postcard or download it for free, by following the links under the picture. Alternatively, you can follow the tags under the picture to find other travel pictures of a particular theme, or switch to another language. Enjoy your travel with pictures from all over the world!
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Picture of View of Robben Island from a distance (Cape Town, South Africa)
Robben Island seen from a distance
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Famous mostly for being the place where Nelson Mandela spent most of his time in prison during the apartheid years, Robben Island nowadays mostly is of interest for visitors who want to know more about its history.
Once inside, our group gets assigned a guide who served time in Robben Island prison, and the story gets grim. We hear about the 4 different groups of prisoners, their privileges, the conditions and food, reality for prisoners here, and our guide gives us a realistic account of his time and the conditions without a trace of emotions, bitterness or regret. This is the part of the tour that I liked most by far - hearing the guide talk about life in prison, that was of course much more complicated than an outsider would imagine. We see the courtyard where Mandela and others could take in fresh air, the vegetable garden where Mandela used to hide his books, the cell where Mandela spent 18 years of his 27 years of prison - contrary to what many believe, he was serving time in another prison at the time of his release in 1990. I again realize that words and labels make a difference and are highly questionable, depending on the position of the person using them. Mandela was for a long time not even considered a political prisoner, but a terrorist, and was therefore denied certain rights. Ultimately, this only added to his fame and his symbolical power. The visit to the prison was a confrontational walk back in time - even though I disliked the hasty way in which visitors are pushed onwards to allow a next group to see a certain place. While seeing some of the penguins on the way back to the catamaran, I fantasized about how I would liked to spend a whole day here with a former prisoner - walking the island, listening to the many extremely interesting stories that must be there.
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