Robben Island Tours
For nearly 400 years, Robben Island was a place of exile
, isolation and imprisonment. Today, a tour of Robben Island is a fascinating must-do activity when visiting Cape Town.This half-day trip to the former penal colony, where Nelson Mandela spent 18 years of his life, gives visitors an opportunity to hear firsthand accounts of what prison life was like on Robben Island. Many of the guides who conduct the informative tours were once political prisoners themselves.
In 1997 Robben Island was turned into a museum and in 1999 it was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Robben Island has become a tremendously important symbol in the new South Africa, reflecting the triumph of good over evil - in essence, of democracy over apartheid.
The tour includes a ferry trip to Robben Island and back which departs from the Nelson Mandela Gateway at the V&A Waterfront. The ferry to Robben Island can get quite rough, but it's a quick 30 minutes and the views of Cape Town and Table Mountain are phenomenal.
Once on the island you can expect an hour-long bus tour around the island and a tour of the maximum security prison.
Arrive at least 20 minutes before your scheduled ferry departure because there's a very interesting interactive exhibit in the waiting hall that gives a concise history of Robben Island. You'll want to take your time here. In the past, Robben Island has also been a leper colony, an army base, a naval base and even served as a place of safety for new colonizers who were afraid of the local Khoi Khoi people living on the mainland.
The bus tour takes you around the island with a guide who informs you about the unique history and ecology of the island. You'll get off the bus at the limestone quarry where Nelson Mandela and other incarcerated ANC activists spent many years, sentenced to hard labour. There's a cave at the quarry which was used as the communal latrine but was also where the more educated prisoners would teach others how to read and write by scratching in the dirt.
History, politics and biology were also taught at this "prison university". It was the only place that prisoners were able to escape the vigilant eyes of the guards. It is said that a good part of South Africa's current constitution was written in that cave. The glare of the sun and the dust in the quarry has caused Nelson Mandela and many other former prisoners to have life-long eyesight and respiratory problems.
An interesting fact about the island involves penguins. Penguins were reintroduced on Robben Island in 1983. They had previously been hunted to extinction and now theres a healthy population of around 60 000.
Among the buildings on the island, theres a quaint Anglican Church which was built for use by the wardens and their families and is now a non-denominational church.
Among the museum employees are ex-political prisoners, who now live in the houses previously occupied by their wardens.
All of this and so much more can be experienced when on a tour of Robben Island. Tickets for the tour can be purchased directly from ticket counters at the Nelson Mandela Gateway. In the summer, tickets do sell out, so you may want to book in advance through a local tour operator. Tours depart hourly from 9am to 3pm.
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