Robben Island and District Six

Day 2

Started this day with a little bit more enjoyable of a breakfast - cornflakes with some sprinkled sugar and toast. On the whole, today was a largely fascinating yet emotional day with the tours of Robben Island and the District Six Museum. To start, our group received a once in a lifetime tour as our mentor, Corvell, ran into a former student who worked on the island. We were able to not only visit the maximum security prison where Nelson Mandela among many other political prisoners were held, but also the medium security facility, the house arrest facility for Robert Sobukwe, and the lime quarry.

Things learned from such visits ranged from facts that the maximum security prison was built by the prisoners themselves to prisoners secretly teaching one another literacy skills in the lime quarry. It was amazing that the tour guides consist of former political prisoners, who come back to tell the story of education and hope for the future rather than merely the horrors of what they went through. Our guide personally spent 11 years of his life there! As we toured, I thought of how I would go insane in a week, let alone imagine sleeping on rugs before bunkbeds came to the prison, or that there was a class system within the prison. Based on classification as either Coloured, Asiatic, Bantu, etc., people received different privileges and food stipens. I was encouraged to hear our guide Victor say prisoners fought for other prisoner's rights, despite large personal risk of losing their own privileges and being thrown into solitary confinement for 7 days without food. Lastly, it was phenomenal to learn of the tradition of the rock pile Mandela and other former prisoners created at the lime quarry. Apparently, leaving such a stone behind when leaving is a universal tradition throughout the world, only fetching it when you return home.

After this special event, we visited the District Six Museum where we learned of the atrocities committed against many people during the relocation and destruction of an entire district for white purposes. Houses, churches, streets, everything - gone! When the 1950 Group Areas Act finally came to be utilized in regards to District Six in 1966, the area was marked for whites only and forever altered. The landscape, considered valuable land, remains unused and generally wasted in comparison to how many lives were altered in the process of the extensive destruction. Sadly, this was a very cohesive diverse community... not only blacks, but Coloureds, Asiatics, Indians, etc. The anger I felt to know that such an area was wiped out for the color of peoples' skins enraged me. Our speaker said something so striking "Animals kill out of need, whereas humans kill to kill... because of two things: greed and selfishness." I can not help but feel this will resonate with me the rest of the trip and the rest of my life. It was so promising yet almost unbearable to observe the commemorative map somewhat started of all the streets and neighborhoods that no longer exist. Constructed on some sort of large tarp or canvas with acrylics or oil pastels, this map was incredible with details added by individual people to mark whom had lived where or what existed in various places. This is a message I find to be more awful than anything of our Civil Rights Movement, sadly, and is one that needs to be incorporated into Civil Rights Studies! On the whole, a very educative day... both mentally and emotionally.