Mandela's cell now a shrine to political miracles
March 2, 1997
Web posted at: 5:45 p.m. EST (2245 GMT)
From Correspondent Christiane Amanpour
ROBBEN ISLAND, South Africa (CNN) -- South Africa's latest
tourist destination is at the end of a 6-mile (9-kilometer) ferry
ride to hell, tracing a journey human beings once made in
chains.
At the end of the ride is the Robben Island prison block that
held Nelson Mandela -- once the
world's most famous inmate -- for 18 of his 27 years in prison.
Days in solitary confinement and nights on thin mats shaped
the prisoner who became president.
"When we came here in 1964 conditions were grim," tour guide
Lionel Davis tells a group. "They all believed we were monsters,
the anti-Christ, you know; we eat people."
Davis and other former inmates conduct the tours, explaining
how food and clothes were rationed by race. And they tell of
the assaults and beatings, and how afterward prisoners were
forced to scrub their own blood from the cells.
Outside, visitors see the lime quarry where prisoners were
forced to break rocks, their eyesight permanently damaged by
the glare from the harsh sun.
"This was real. This was about pain. People experiencing
blood," said one visitor. "People (defecating) in little buckets,
then having to clean it. Put water in those same buckets and
having to wash their face."
Robben Island is surrounded by natural beauty and a wildlife
sanctuary, making it difficult to imagine the cruelty that
was done there.
But Mandela called it the iron fist, the harshest outpost of
South Africa's penal system. It was only after pressure from
sympathetic South Africans and the international community
that conditions began to improve.
Thanks to that pressure, the inmates were eventually allowed
to study, and to receive a visitor and a letter more than
once every six months. But Mandela had to lobby three years
for the right to wear sunglasses in the quarry.
Some of Robben Island's visitors come from abroad, but it's
the South Africans, black and white, who find their reckoning
at the isolated outpost. Most note a sense of remorse about
what happened at the prison.
Davis and his fellow former inmates preach forgiveness
now, born from the necessity of bridging political and
personal differences while they were locked inside.
For some, of course, reconciliation does not come easily. And
neither is a journey across the water to the prison an easy
one.
Visitors on the way back generally sit quietly, lost in
thought. They talk of the evil that lived on the island, of
the "extreme sadness" they feel about the waste of time and
resources to keep the prison going.
And they worry about the legacy left to their children.
But the trip to Robben Island affords a glimpse not only into
the depths of despair and cruelty suffered by the prisoners
who lived there, but it also offers a vision of the triumph
of human spirit, a pilgrimage to the shrine of Nelson
Mandela, patron saint of political miracles.
Related stories:
Related sites:
Note: Pages will open in a new browser window
External sites are not endorsed by CNN Interactive.
© 1997 Cable News Network, Inc.
All Rights Reserved.