Day 59 - Cape Town

My day started with a 30-minute ferry away from Cape Town to Robben Island, renown for the political prisoners that spent decades there, including Nelson Mandela.  We met up with a former prisoner, Tulani Mombasa, who guided us through the visiting ward, the prison wards, the exercise yards, and left us at Nelson Mandela’s 2m x 2m cell (pictured).  It was amazing what good spirits Tulani was in, and he often joked about the giant gut he amassed since leaving prison.

Tulani was imprisoned along with Nelson Mandela, and told many stories of how Mandela would exercise rigorously as he was an avid wrestler and tennis player, how he would smuggle messages between wards via tennis balls hit over the wall, and how Mandela’s policy of “each one teach one” led to the bathrooms being used as classrooms after all other lights were shut off.  He also told us about physical and psychological torture they endured (the latter being worse), and about how they would break down guards to like them, only to have new guards rotate in every 18 months.

We reluctantly left Tulani and boarded a bus for a tour of the rest of the island.  We passed the area where Robert Sobukwe was kept in solitary confinement.  Sobukwe is a little-known historical figure, but he was such a powerful speaker that there were South African laws written specifically for him, and he was denied any communication until his speaking skills deteriorated.  We also learned that Robben Island was originally used as a leper colony.  Since officials didn’t want sick people to breed new leper babies, the men and the women were kept separately.  “But,” as our guide explained, “where there’s a man’s will, there’s a way, and there were 43 births on the island.”

Back on the mainland, we got back on the bus and drove to the Langa township for lunch.  The venue was clean, large with tall ceilings, and full of long tables packed with tourists.  The buffet, complete with ostrich and other traditional foods I don’t dare try to spell or pronounce, was delicious and filling.  The host, Sheila, gave us a warm greeting and tried to teach us some Xhosa (the X’s are clicks).

After lunch, we ridiculously drove around the township in our enormous tour bus, with three other tour buses following us.  The people on the streets waved and smiled at us warmly.  They were much more welcoming than the Ghanaians, and appreciated the economic boost that tourism brought in without the aggression.  The way people lived here was incredible.  They made houses out of any materials available, including wooden boards, cardboard, and old shipping containers.  They illegally siphoned off electricity from nearby electricity towers.  And from what I hear, the settlements now have more permanent structures than in the days when they used to be bulldozed regularly.  What was more amazing was that to the left you may see nice, new houses with garages, sometimes a Mercedes or BMW, and to the right you would see a house built out of a pile of rubbish.

We hurried out of the township to get to the District 6 museum, actually passing District 6 itself along the way.  The museum was dedicated to the destruction that began in 1966, when District 6 was declared a white neighborhood and all existing residents were driven out.  The residential areas were bulldozed for new settlements, but no company wanted to be marred by apartheid or associated with this destruction, so nothing was built on the land.  In 1997, rows of new, white houses were built, and the former residents and their descendants were invited to move back, but, of course, the damage is done.