Travel Guides Southern Africa - Wildlife, Game Reserves, Safaris, Photographic Safaris, Birding Safaris, Hiking

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CULTURE AND HERITAGE PLACES
PROVINCE: WESTERN CAPE
CLOSEST TOWN/CITY: CAPE TOWN
PLACE: ROBBEN ISLAND

For nearly 400 years, Robben Island, 12 kilometres from Cape Town, was a place of banishment, exile, isolation and imprisonment. It was here that rulers sent those they regarded as political troublemakers, social outcasts and the unwanted of society.

During the apartheid years Robben Island became internationally known for its institutional brutality. The duty of those who ran the Island and its prison was to isolate opponents of apartheid and to crush their morale. Some freedom fighters spent more than a quarter of a century in prison for their beliefs.

Those imprisoned on the Island succeeded on a psychological and political level in turning a prison 'hell-hole' into a symbol of freedom and personal liberation. Robben Island came to symbolise, not only for South Africa and the African continent, but also for the entire world, the triumph of the human spirit over enormous hardship and adversity.

ATTRACTIONS ON ROBBEN ISLAND
1. Maximum security prison
The sprawling Robben Island Maximum Security Prison was built in the early 1960s. The prison was built over graves from the leper period with slate dug from the stone quarries by the prisoners themselves.

The Maximum Security Prison soon became known as the 'hell-hole' of apartheid. Nelson Mandela described it as 'without question the harshest, most iron-fisted outpost of the South African penal system'.

2. The Kramat
The kramat next to the prison commemorates one of the founders of Islam in South Africa. Sheikh Madura was exiled in the 1740's and died on Robben Island. Many other 'Indiaanen' and 'Mohammedaanen' Muslim political prisoners from East Asia, were imprisoned here, including Tuan Guru, who became the first chief imam in South Africa.

3. The Lime quarry
The lime quarry was made famous by the political prisoners who worked there regularly with pick and spade in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Quarried lime was used to resurface the Island's roads.

4. The stone quarry
The stone quarry is situated in the northern shores of the island, close to the water's edge. The site has been known for over 200 years and probably longer. It has been a place where many human hardships have occurred, a place of colonial rule and racial oppression. A place where under Dutch and British rule, convicts, slaves and perhaps most shamefully, lepers and lunatics were forced to labour in the quarries for the economic benefit of their oppressors

Natural Attractions:
1. Bird Life
Robben Island hosts about 74 bird species. These include seabirds, waterbirds and terrestrial birds. A few species have been introduced to the Island by humans such as the chukar and guinea fowl.

2. Natural Vegetation
The natural vegetation is classified as Strandveld of the West Coast similar to that found between Cape Point and the Olifants River. The types of flora and fauna on Robben Island has been affected by the built environment, and extensive plantations of shrubs and exotic trees, some of which was planted to provide shade for patients during the period the Island functioned as a leper colony.

3. Marine and wildlife
The boat trip between Cape Town and Robben Island provides opportunity to see a wide spectrum of seabirds and marine mammals including Cape Fur seals, Southern Right whales and Dusky and Heaviside Dolphins.

Once on the Island, you will be able to see some of the 23 species of mammals, including small herds of bontebok, springbok, steenbok, European fallow deer and eland. Ostriches, lizards, geckoes, snakes and tortoises can also be found.

4. Geology
The Island is actually the summit of an ancient, now submerged mountain, linked by an undersea saddle to the Blouberg. Its lower strata consists of Malmesbury shale forming a rocky and somewhat inhospitable coastline. Above this lies a thick limestone and calcrete deposit covered by windblown sands and shell fragments


ROBBEN ISLAND TOURS
The Robben Island Museum Tours Department includes some ex-political prisoners who act as tour guides on Cape Town's World Heritage Site.

One such guide is Lionel Davis, who, in April 1964, was sentenced to six years on Robben Island, after being found guilty of conspiring to commit sabotage. Now Lionel lives on the Island with his family and is the chairperson of the Robben Island Village Association.

Today, Lionel speaks evenly of his former jailers and the appalling conditions he had to endure in the early 1960s and 1970s at the Robben Island Maximum Security Prison. Guides such as Lionel bring to life a South African heritage, which speaks of heroic endurance in the face of adversity and the triumph of the human spirit over evil.

The Robben Island Museum tour starts at Jetty 1 on the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront, Cape Town, where the museum ticket office, shop and information centre is located. From December 2001, ferries will depart from the Nelson Mandela Gateway building at the new Clock Tower precinct development.

Ferries depart seven days a week at regular intervals throughout the day, weather permitting.

The standard tour is presently 3 and a half hours long, including the two half-hour ferry trips there and back. Fares: adults R100, children (4 to 17) R50. Children below the age of 4 needn't pay, but their seats must be booked. South African pensioners with proper identification pay R60 for the Monday and Wednesday 9am ferries. Ticket prices and tour components may change towards the end of 2001.

Disadvantaged and community groups of 15 or more, meeting special requirements, may be granted concession fares on application.

For more information visit: www.robben-island.org.za