The view from Robben Island
Here I am on Robben Island, a rather flat and featureless island a few miles from the city, framed as it is by the iconic mountain behind me. It was a brief but meaningful tour which brought home to me the spartan and mundane existence of the political inmates here. I was interested to learn that it had been used as a penal colony well before Mandela's time as well as a place to quarantine lepers from the mainland. It has seen much suffering over the centuries. To the Dutch, Robben means 'seal' but on an old map at the Castle of Good Hope I also saw it labeled as Penguin Island!
After the British seized the Cape of Good Hope area in 1806, many of the Dutch settlers (the Boers) trekked north to found their own republics. The discovery of diamonds (1867) and gold (1886) spurred wealth and immigration and intensified the subjug... ... read more 
