Mandela's Prison Life

After five months in South Africa, I finally got to Robben Island, Nelson Mandela’s infamous place of imprisonment for eighteen horrific years.  I had heard and read about it, but seeing it in person was entirely different, jaw-dropping in its reality.  My family and two visiting sister in-laws, after a mostly smooth 45-minute ferry ride, disembarked and proceeded down a 200-yard long pier.  The walk itself, though in the company of 60 other eager tourists, was immediately unsettling, adorned with several sobering displays of chained black prisoners forcefully ushered across the same pier by heavily armed Afrikaan guards.  At the end of the display stands a fifty-foot gate with the eerily ironic motto Ons Dien Met Trots, We Serve with Pride.  Fifty yards further lies the prison, a terrifying stone structure with few windows and seemingly endless barbed wire.  As the entire tourist group stood stunned, an older, unassuming gentleman sidled up beside us.  Without warning, he bellowed a curt welcome and introduced himself as inmate #64, corresponding with the number he was assigned when he first came to Robins Island in 1976.  Like Mandela, he too was incarcerated for “political crimes,” remaining at the prison for an “eternal six years.”  He informed us that he would happily serve as our guide but warned that much of what we saw and heard from then on might prove disturbing.  On that uplifting note, we exchanged awkward glances and were on our way.  Stopping at the front door, #64 raised a massive knocker, striking it three methodical times on the thick metal.  Each time resonated more loudly than before down an invisible hallway.  A small hatch opened, words quickly uttered, and the front door groaned open on old, tired hinges.  As we walked slowly through, the sunshine all but vanished, as small slits for windows kept most light out.  The effect was profound; all lingering jovial banter outside gave way to hushed silence.  We all moved solemnly through a soulless hallway, finally passing through another door to a cramped courtyard.  Reconvening, #64 confirmed the purpose of the first corridor, to inject abject fear into the prisoners, and described the space in which we stood as a momentary reprieve before entering another ominous building ahead.  Turning, he escorted us in to what appeared to be a tiny cabin with a tiny social space and roughly twenty cramped bunk beds toward its far wall.  Here, #64 recounted some of the brutal treatment that he and the other inmates were forced to endure, including frequent beatings and, until 1980, mere blankets for beds on concrete flooring.  In addition, the inmates were brought to a stone quarry several times a week for no other reason than to keep them busy.  Mandela himself was told that he would be working in the stone yard for six months, which ultimately turned into thirteen years.  Apparently, however, and on a lighter note, the first ANC government started here, as the inmates were able to exploit a nearby cave as their “political home base.”  In that cave, #64 informed us, Mandela succeeded at sparking his revolution.  Even more subdued, we shuffled out, across another slightly larger courtyard used for infrequent soccer matches between the guards and “well-behaved” prisoners.  Instantly, we were brought to another, longer, darker row of stone jail cells.  #64 turned toward us very slowly, as if preparing himself to speak, and announced that all black political leaders, including Mandela, were kept here, in cells no larger than closets.  For a minute or more, he remained uncomfortably silent, lost in emotion, finally beckoning us to enter the doorway to see what he meant.  The cells were indeed unthinkably cramped.  Everyone was stunned.  How could anyone survive like this for a week much less many years?  Adding further to our pervasive discomfort, a single personal letter from each prisoner adorned the wall of each cell, chronicling, in clips, his personal experience and attesting to his incredible strength.  Making our way to the exit, my son looked noticeably shaken.  He turned to me and said that he needed to do something to help equality.  When I asked him what he meant, he asserted that no one should ever have to waste away in a place like this.  Trying to keep Luke from hitting rock bottom, I let him know that it wasn’t all bad; Mandela was released and later became one of the greatest leaders of all time.  And that is where’d I’d like to leave this blog.  Yes, this experience was a veritable punch to the face - it was grueling for all of us, but from this chapter came one of the most amazing revolutions in history.  Mandela could easily have allowed his struggle to shape him, to render him resentful, angry, and even violent.  But he realized that South Africa needed, and deserved, much better.  He devoted the rest of his life to ending Apartheid and bringing peace to all South Africans.  Luke turned to me when I shared these thoughts and asked why there weren’t more people like Mandela.  Unfortunately, for that question, I had no good answer.