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Robben Island*
UNESCO World Heritage Site
Prison buildings on Robben Island. Table Mountain some 15 km in the background
State Party  South Africa
Type Cultural
Criteria iii, vi
Reference 916
Region** Africa
Coordinates 33°48′24″S 18°21′58″E / -33.806734, 18.366222Coordinates: 33°48′24″S 18°21′58″E / -33.806734, 18.366222
Inscription history
Inscription 1999  (23rd Session)
* Name as inscribed on World Heritage List.
** Region as classified by UNESCO.

Robben Island (Afrikaans Robbeneiland) or Penguin Island1 is an island in Table Bay, some seven kilometres off the coast of Cape Town, South Africa. The name is Dutch for "seal island". Robben Island is roughly oval in shape and about a kilometre wide. It is flat and only a few metres above sea level, as a result of an ancient erosion event. The island is composed of Precambrian metamorphic rocks belonging to the Malmesbury Group. It is of particular note as it was here that former South African President and Nobel Laureate Nelson Mandela and incumbent South African President Kgalema Motlanthe2, alongside many other political prisoners, spent decades imprisoned during the apartheid era.

Contents

History

Robben Island was first inhabited thousands of years ago by stone age people, at a time when sea levels were considerably lower than they are today and people could walk to it.citation needed It was then a flat-topped hill. Towards the end of the last ice age, the melting of the ancient ice caps caused sea levels to rise and the land around the island was flooded by the ocean. Since the end of the 17th century, Robben Island has been used to isolate certain people — mainly prisoners — and amongst its first permanent inhabitants were political leaders from various Dutch colonies, including Indonesia. After a failed uprising at Grahamstown in 1819, the fifth of the Xhosa Wars, the British colonial government sentenced African leader Makanda Nxele to life imprisonment on the island .3 He drowned on the shores of Table Bay after escaping the prison.45

From 1836 to 1931 the island was used as a leper colony and animal quarantine station.6 During the Second World War, the island was fortified and guns were installed as part of the defences for Cape Town.

Apartheid era

Gate to Robben Island prison.

Under the apartheid regime, Robben Island became a maximum security prison in 1959, and its character as an island-prison near to a major population centre invites comparisons with Alcatraz. Between 1961 and 1991, over three thousand men were incarcerated here as political prisoners, often for decades, including the distinguished international statesman Nelson Mandela. Prisoner family member visits were restricted to once every six months, for a period of only thirty minutes, in conditions which made even conversation difficult. The only reading material allowed was the Bible. A variety of barbaric impositions were made on prisoners, including breaking rocks and mining lime. In the early 1980s, many prisoners engaged in more active demands for rights, and a 1981 hunger strike reinforced their case and led to some minor improvements in conditions.

Throughout this period, security was very tight and the island off limits to almost all civilians, including fishermen. Before about 1980 almost no-one, even among inhabitants of Cape Town, had set foot on the island. It is not generally known that the use of the island as a prison was greatly inhibited for centuries by a lack of fresh water. The island is arid, with low scrubby vegetation and has no watercourses. Boreholes were drilled in the first half of the 20th century but in due course the fragile water table was invaded by sea water and the bores became useless. Sometime after 1965 a pipeline was laid on the bottom of the ocean from Cape Town.

The particular character of the apartheid era prisoners, and their disciplined morale in the face of considerable difficulties and even abuse, is well attested as being sustained by their commitment to the cause of the struggle for freedom, in particular for the majority black African population.

In June 1980 Frederik Willem de Klerk initiated the removal of political prisoners, and most prisoners left by May 1981. The last of the non-political prisoners (who had always been held separately from political prisoners) left the island in 1996, and it became a museum in 1997. Nelson Mandela left to worldwide acclaim on February 11th, 1990.

Maritime peril

Robben Island as viewed from Table Mountain. The view is roughly to the north-northwest. The distant sandy shore beyond disappears towards Saldanha Bay.

Robben Island and nearby Whale Rock 1 have been the nemesis of many a ship and its crew. The surf of the open Atlantic Ocean thunders continuously at its margins and any vessel wrecked on the reefs offshore is soon beaten to pieces and disappears. In the latter half of the 1600s a Dutch ship laden with gold coins earmarked for the payment of the salaries of employees of the Dutch East India Company in Batavia (now Jakarta, Indonesia) disintegrated on these reefs a short distance off shore, in relatively shallow but very restless waters.citation needed The gold today would be worth tens of millions of pounds sterling or U.S. dollars. A few coins have washed ashore over the centuries but the treasure itself remains in the ocean. It is protected largely by the almost ceaseless and violent surf. Many other vessels have been wrecked around the isle.

Today

Today the island is a popular tourist destination and was declared a World Heritage Site in 1999. It is reached by ferry from the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront in Cape Town and is open throughout the year, weather permitting, and tours of the island and prison are led by guides who were formerly prisoners there. Robben Island Museum (RIM) operates as a site or living museum. All the land on the island is owned by the State, with the exception of the island church.

Robben Island lighthouse

Robben Island (South Africa)
Robben Island
Robben Island
South Africa

Jan van Riebeeck first set a navigation aid atop Fire Hill (now Minto Hill), the highest point on the island. Huge bonfires were lit at night to warn VOC ships of the rocks which surround the island. The current Robben Island lighthouse, built on Minto Hill in 1864,7 is 18 metres (59 ft) high and was converted to electricity in 1938. It is the only South African lighthouse to utilise a flashing light instead of a revolving light.citation needed Its light is visible for 24 nautical miles.8

Moturu Kramat

The Moturu Kramat, a sacred site for Muslim pilgrimage on Robben Island, was built in 1969 to commemorate Sayed Abdurahman Moturu, the Prince of Madura. Moturu, one of Cape Town's first 'imams', was exiled to the island in the mid 1740s and died there in 1754. Muslim political prisoners would pay homage at the shrine before leaving the island.

Animal life

When the Dutch arrived in the area in 1652, the only large animals on the island were seals and birds, principally penguins. In 1654, the settlers released rabbits on the island in order to provide a ready source of meat for passing ships.9 The original colony of African Penguins on the island was completely exterminated by 1800. However the modern day island is once again an important breeding area for the species after a new colony established itself there in 1983.10 The colony has grown to 13,000 and is now the third biggest for the species. The penguins are easy to see close up in their natural habitat and are therefore a popular tourist attraction.

Around 1958, Lieutenant Peter Klerck, a naval officer serving on the island, introduced various animals. The following extract of an article, written some 10 years ago by Michael Klerck who was born on the island, describes the fauna life there:11

“ My father, a naval officer at the time, with the sanction of Doctor Hey, director of Nature Conservation, turned an area into a nature reserve. A 'Noah's Ark' berthed in the harbour sometime in 1958. They stocked the island with tortoise, duck, geese, buck (which included Springbok, Eland, Steenbok, Bontebok and Fallow Deer), Ostrich and a few Wildebeest which did not last long. All except the fallow deer are indigenous to the Cape. Many animals are still there12 including three species of tortoise - the most recently discovered in 1998 - two Parrot Beaked specimens that have remained undetected until now. The leopard or mountain tortoises might have suspected the past terror; perhaps they had no intention of being a part of a future infamy, but they often attempted the swim back to the mainland (they are the only species in the world that can swim). Boats would lift them out of the sea in Table Bay and return them to us. None of the original 12 shipped over remain, and in 1995, four more were introduced - they seem to have more easily accepted their home as they are still residents. One resident brought across a large leopard tortoise discovered in a friend's garden in Newlands, Cape Town. He lived in our garden and grew big enough to climb over the wall and roam the island much like the sheep in Van Riebeeck's time. As children we were able to ride his great frame comfortably, as did some grown men. The buck and ostriches seemed equally happy and the ducks and Egyptian Geese were assigned a home in the old quarry, which had, some three hundred years before, supplied the dressed stone for the foundations of the Castle; at the time of my residence it bristled with fish.

Recent reports in Cape Town newspapers show that a lack of upkeep, a lack of culling, and the proliferation of rabbits on the island has led to the total devastation of the wildlife; there remains today almost none of the animals my father brought over all those years ago; the rabbits themselves have laid the island waste, stripping it of almost all ground vegetation. It looks almost like a desert. A reporter from the broadcasting corporation told me recently that they found the carcass of the last Bontebok.

 ”

The SPCA is currently culling the more than 10,000 rabbits.citation needed

List of former prisoners held at Robben Island

Former prison cells on Robben Island

References

  1. ^ a b James Horsburgh (1852). The India Directory, Or Directions for Sailing to and from the East Indies, China, Australia and the Interjacent Ports, W.H. Allen & Co.. pp. p71, http://books.google.com/books?id=gCk6YV5AslIC. 
  2. ^ "New S. Africa president sworn in". BBC News (2008-09-25). Retrieved on 2008-11-22.
  3. ^ Frederick Marryat. The Mission; or Scenes in Africa. London: Nick Hodson, http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/21555. Retrieved on 10 October 2008. 
  4. ^ "Christianity in Africa South of the Sahara: 19th Century Xhosa Christianity". Bethel University. Retrieved on 2008-10-10.
  5. ^ Edwin Diale (1979). "Makana". African National Congress. Retrieved on 2008-10-10.
  6. ^ Winston Churchill (1900). London to Ladysmith via Pretoria. London: Longmans, Green, and Co., http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/14426. Retrieved on 10 October 2008. 
  7. ^ William Henry Rosser, James Frederick Imray (1867). The Seaman's Guide to the Navigation of the Indian Ocean and China Sea, J. Imray & Son. pp. p280, http://books.google.com.au/books?id=_8BBAAAAIAAJ&pg=RA1-PA275. Retrieved on 4 October 2008. 
  8. ^ Robben Island Lighthouse
  9. ^ George McCall Theal (1897). History of South Africa Under the Administration of the Dutch East India Company [1652 to 1795: Under the Administration of the Dutch East India Company (1652 - 1795)], Swan Sonnenschein. pp. p442, http://books.google.com/books?id=xzIPAAAAYAAJ. Retrieved on 10 October 2008. 
  10. ^ Les Underhill. "Robben Island". Avian Demography Unit, University of Cape Town. Retrieved on 2008-10-12.
  11. ^ Michael Klerck. "Robben Island: Childhood Memories - a personal reflection". robbenisland.org. Retrieved on 2008-11-23.
  12. ^ No longer true as of 2008

External links

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