Cape Town - Sunday (Robben Island)

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At last our patience comes good - a scorching hot day but with no discernible wind so set fair to go to Robben Island and then up the mountain later on.

As you queue patiently for the ferry to the island I'm struck by a feeling of profound sadness - looking at the photos on the wall the abiding feeling is loneliness and separation. It's only 12 km across the sea but it may have been to the end of the world for all intents and purposes. Two visits a year, two letters a year is beyond cruel imaginings. If the prisoner and visitor didn't speak English or Afrikaneer then they would have to sit in silence. Utterly, utterly inhuman and unspeakably cruel.

The dolphins swim alongside the ferry and we disembark onto buses to tour the island. First stop the lime quarry where the prisoners worked 8 hours a day, 7 days a week all year in freezing winter and blistering summer. On a hot day like today the brightness hurts the eyes behind sunglasses without protection and with the dust it must have been terrible. The cairn of stones is a silent testimony to the pointless, cruel attempt to break the prisoners spirits by moving rocks from A to B each day and back again the following day. Futile at every level. Thence to the prison to meet Sipho our guide a prisoner for several years in the 1980s. He speaks with a tenderness and humour which is in juxtaposition to the savagery of treatment - 3 months in solitary for refusing to strip naked on registration. Stories of torture, beatings and inhuman treatment are given with a smile, twinkle of the eyes and no sense of retribution or revenge. In Section D we see the story of the forgotten Namibian prisoners struggling for both freedom and independence - a country and struggle overlooked but where unspeakable cruelty took place for many decades as German South West Africa and later as South West AfrIda too. Next into the exercise yard made famous by the photos of Mandela, Sisulu and others - it's searingly hot on a late spring day what it was like in the height of summer is beyond imaginings, finally a view of Mandelas cell - small, cruel, vicious space that resulted in dignity, magnanimity, respect and kindness. The final memory - the dog cages they kept the dogs in were larger than the cells they kept the prisoners in...

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