It Slowly Emerges from the Mist a Concrete Ringed Harbour Providing Access to Just Over

Robben Island

The Prison

It slowly emerges from the mist…a concrete ringed harbour providing access to just over 500 hectares of shale, limestone and scrub bush. 11 kilometres from the nearest landfall, the clear, cold water is the perfect deterrent to anyone wanting to escape this island fortress. Robben Island…notorious as a place of banishment for almost 500 years, today a UNESCO World Heritage Site, memorial and living museum dedicated to educating the world about the horrors of apartheid and human rights abuses that have taken place on this rocky piece of land since the establishment of the Cape colony by the Dutch East Indian Trading Company (VOC).

Many of the icons of the struggle against apartheid in South Africa have spent time here. While names like Mandela, Sisulu, Sobukwe, Kathrada are most often associated with this place there are others…many others whose memories are etched in the very rock that they were made to quarry and then use to build their own place of confinement. One such person is the individual who now waits for us on the docks as our ferry ties up alongside. Almost forty-one years ago he was arriving at this dock; a political prisoner charged with conspiring to commit sabotage against the state. It is here where he would remain for seven years.

I remember his deep, hearty laugh and I am not disappointed as I disembark and find myself enveloped in his presence.

Lionel Davis, prisoner 36664…despite his short stature there is nothing small about this man. He even states, when asked about his time on RobbenIslandthat his incarceration has made him walk taller, not only proud of what he values but of who he has become.

Lionel greets us upon completion of a bus tour of this tiny island and begins our introduction to the place that he calls home…RobbenIslandMuseum. I met Lionel in the spring of 2006 while he was on a tour in Canada. It was there that I was first introduced to his story and began to understand apartheid through the eyes of one who had lived it in its most horrible form. This day I listened to that story again but this time from the very place that came to represent the brutality of apartheid. As I listen to Lionel speak, as I watch him stop ad gaze into the cell in which he was imprisoned I am amazed that he can speak with such calm and “matter of factness”. I am unsure of how I would feel had I been in his place. To listen to him describe life in this place is to listen to the growth and development of the man from someone who equated apartheid with whites and consequently grew up with a hatred of whites to someone who came to understand that it was not whites but rather the policies of this oppressive regime that were to be hated and changed. He describes this as a turning point in his personal politicization and the beginning of his process of becoming human.

This is a journey that has taken Lionel from his release, through years of house arrest to his current work as an interpreter and guide at RobbenIslandMuseum. Here, this vital 71 year old spends his time educating young and old alike about apartheid but more importantly about unity and living in harmony with each other as citizens of this fragile sphere on which we live.

Later this winter Lionel will leave Robben Island for the last time as he retires and begins a new career in the arts but there is no doubt in my mind that he will continue his work as an icon of understanding and humanity.

We bid each other adieu and as I board the ferry for the return passage to the mainland I watch as he waves and then turns to greet a new group of visitors to this place. Godspeed Lionel. Go well.