We had booked ahead, on the advice of many people, and we were glad we did—there is a ferry boat which takes you to the island, and it was packed. It is a half-hour ride across the seventeen kilometres of shark-visited, cold waters. And when you get there, it looks at first like an ordinary place.
You are put on buses and driven around the settlement area; this island was used four hundred years ago by sailors, then settled and used for a mental and chronic hospital, then a leper colony, then a military establishment and base during the Great Wars, and finally a prison. But only a prison for non-white males: females and whites went to better prisons in Pretoria. The picture is of the limestone quarry worked by the prisoners. the small pile of stones nearer the foreground was put there by ex-prisoners at one of their reunions.
Sentences were extended without reason. Work was added on to schedules, reading and talking were limited. One man—Robert Sobukwe—was so feared by the government that they put him in solitary and forbid the guards from talking with him at all. He was let out at the end of his sentence, after international pressure, then promptly re-arrested. In the end they only let him out to die, so they wouldn't have his death on their hands, and face the world with that crime as well.
The bus ride took about an hour plus, and in the end we had only slightly more than a half-hour for the prison talk, which was led by a former inmate. At the end of this, Darlene and I decided we had not done enough, so skipped our planned ferry home, and joined another tour, one with a group of young Argentinian rugby players. In the end, we heard parts of the prison discussion three times through three different guides. There are some stories coming out of that. And we met a young man from the rugby team that spoke fair English and was soon attached to us, exchanging emails with us by the end of the trip.
So we caught the later ferry and soon were back in Cape Town, hungry by then (mid-afternoon). Stopped for a sandwich and a glass of wine, then I took off back to the hotel to write this blog. Darlene wanted to take more time, so came later. She tried a new route and got lost, but eventually, after careful consultation with several security people along the way, arrived hot and tired at the hotel.
Our supper was with Don Pinnock and his wife Patricia, who will be our B & B hosts for the second leg in Cape Town. And they were going to store for us a bag of things not needed on the next leg of this journey.
Turns out that we have a lot in common. Both of us as couples have two children, same ages. Both of us went through the radicalization of the sixties on the left of the spectrum, and have maintained some sort of involvement with our early adulthood causes. We spoke long and in depth about many subjects, and will be glad to have the time with them when we return to this area.
Night came late, but we slept well.
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Location:Somerset Rd,Cape Town,South Africa
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