Cape Town

Cape Town and Table Mountain

We started the day by taking the cable car up to the top of Table Mountain which dominates the city. From there we could look down 2000 feet to Cape Town or across to Lions Head, a rocky formation. The wind was blowing and after about 10 minutes the clouds blew in, destroying the view. Table Mountain consists of granite on the bottom, then shale, and finally sandstone at the top.
We also did a tour of downtown, a mixture of historic buildings and new. The old fortress, Castle of Good Hope, is now inland due to the filling in of Table Bay to expand the downtown. We passed a number of museums and the Parliament building.
In the afternoon we toured Robben Island, where the political prisoners were kept during the apartheid years. This tour was one of the most gripping, we've ever taken. It started with a 35 minutes bus tour around the island to see the historic buildings. Our guide was very articulate, funny and praise worthy of the countries who had helped South Africa. The island was a leper colony from 1845 to 1931, when Irish priests and nuns settled in Irish Town to care for the lepers. From 1931 to 1939 the island was deserted. From 1939 to 1959 it was a military base for the British. We saw a number of battery formations, guns, and cannon. From 1960 to 1991 it was a prison island with 4 different prisons: the old prison, the medium security prison (which is now a school), the maximum security prison, and the Sobukwe house, where Robert Subukwe was imprisoned for 6 years, never allowed to speak or be spoken to.
One of the last stops was the lime quarry where the prisoners worked 8 hours a day. We could see a cave, which served as their latrine, lunch place, and the 'university', where the educated prisoners (30% were literate) taught the others, and also discussed politics. Next to it was a pile of rocks, laid their in 1995 when former political prisoners reunited on the island.


Our last stop was the maximum security block, home to Nelson Mandela for 18 of his 27 years of imprisonment. We met Modisac, who was sentenced here for 5 years, arrested as a student activist at age 16. This was at a time, in 1961, when you could undergo unlimited time in detention, followed by a prison term for even mentioning "ANC" or "Mandela". Modisac told us of some of the torture he endured, having his tongue stretched with a pair of pliers, pins put under his fingernails, and having a stick put up his penis. He contemplated suicide 3 times, but thoughts of his family and especially his mother kept him going. The prisoners could write one 500 word letter every 4 months and have a 30 minute visit every 6 months. Modisac said that at the end of 5 years, he was filled with hate and wanted revenge against his captors.
This is where I began to understand what a powerful leader Nelson Mandela was. He preached that the prison wardens are not your enemy - they had been conscripted and taught how to torture, that what South Africa needed was freedom for all South Africans. We could not afford a violent struggle, we must negotiate for our rights, we must forgive, otherwise violence would beget violence and destroy the country.
The cells were designed to hold 20 people, and would have 40-50 prisoners with concrete floors and 2 buckets. The prisoners only wore shorts and a shirt, winter or summer. In 1974, they were given mats to sleep on, then in 1978 they got bunk beds.
It was a powerful story and had most of us in tears - we couldn't help but see the parallels between South Africa then, and Zimbabwe now. Yet South Africa, ended up with a powerful new leader in Nelson Mandela, who performed miracles with his truth and reconciliation boards - where the truth came out, but people were forgiven, and South Africa has thrived since then.