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Published: September 13th 2023
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We kicked off with a visit to the aquarium, alarmed to see – and more significantly hear – a school party of about 60 primary school boys making an unholy racket. Fortunately we managed to dodge them most of the way round. The first exhibit was a frenzied shoal of clownfish straight out of Finding Nemo. We saw tiny translucent jellyfish and miniature pale pink strawberry corals, then moved on to the big tanks with the sharks and a very cute rescued turtle. He had balance problems and was floating upside down, so the staff had attached a ballast weight to the top of his shell to keep him the right way up. But the highlight of the trip was the penguin enclosure. By chance we arrived just as three African penguins were brought out for a short walk in front of the visitors. The final penguin did not want to follow the route and hid in some vegetation, delivering a sharp nip to the zoo keeper who tried to pick him up!
Our rearranged trip to Robben Island was at 1.00. Sara in particular was glad the sea was much calmer than the day before, but there was still
a swell and she felt a bit queasy. Once on the island we set off in coaches to explore. We had not realised the island was so big. It once housed a leper colony and was a regular prison from the 17
th century onwards when the Dutch VOC kept political prisoners there from across their East Asian possessions. In the 20
th century prisoners were taken there to build the new prison, not realising they would soon be its inhabitants. We were taken round the prison itself by a Namibian who had belonged to SWAPO and who had been imprisoned for armed insurrection in 1983 for 15 years, but had been released in 1990 under the amnesty as apartheid was ending. It was a harrowing story, much of we had not known before. The inmates were housed 60 to a room, with no beds and just two small felt mats to sleep on. They were allotted three blankets each – one to use as a sheet, one as a pillow and one as a blanket. There was no glass in the windows so it was freezing in winter and the rain poured in. They had to eat all their meals outside
in the courtyard, whatever the weather and the black inmates were only given short sleeved shirts and shorts to wear, with no footwear, even in winter. Six days a week they had to work in a limestone quarry. Many died from TB and pneumonia. Beatings were commonplace and the brutality of the regime was inconceivable and designed to dehumanise them. Yet they retained their hope and the better educated prisoners, and the natural leaders like Mandela and Walter Sisulu taught and inspired those with less education, and in the words of Sparks our prisoner, to never give up hope and believe they would eventually be free.
One visitor asked what retribution was meted out to the guards after the fall of apartheid. The answer was none. Mandela felt that to take action against them was to sink to their level and would lead to a perpetual state of war within South Africa, and persuaded the ANC to look for reconciliation rather than revenge. Sadly, our guide said that most prisoners struggled to find jobs after their release, and some of the remaining survivors, like him, now live and work on Robben Island because they cannot afford to live on
the mainland. He also said that initially coming back had been very painful, but gradually he and the others came to see it as their home and did not want to leave.
We got back to the hotel after 5.00, only to find we could not make a much needed cup of tea as load sharing was in force. South Africa has a lack of electricity generation and transmission capability and huge power shortages result, so each area is subject to periods of a few hours each day without power. Hotels run generators but these cannot produce all the power needed, so they limit power to lighting and one lift in three. David reckons that is something we can look forward to soon in the UK as well……
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