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Heritage & History

Robben Island: From Prison to a Symbol of Freedom

For nearly four centuries, a small island off Cape Town was a place of banishment, isolation and imprisonment. Today, former political prisoners guide visitors through the cells where Nelson Mandela spent 18 years.

By Amos Hope Jnr · · 4 min read

From the top of Table Mountain, on a clear day, you can see it: a low, flat island lying in the Atlantic, a few kilometres out from Table Bay. It looks peaceful. Penguins nest on its shores, and seals swim in the cold surrounding water. But for almost four hundred years, Robben Island was a place where people were sent to be forgotten. Its most famous prisoner, Nelson Mandela, spent 18 of his 27 years in prison here. Today, it is a museum and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and a symbol of what the anti-apartheid struggle overcame.

An island of seals

The name Robben Island comes from the Dutch word robben, meaning "seals", which were once abundant there. The island is about 3.3 kilometres long and lies roughly 7 kilometres from the nearest point on the mainland. The cold sea and strong currents made it hard to escape, which is why it was chosen, again and again, as a place of banishment.

Centuries of banishment

Robben Island's history as a prison began soon after the Dutch East India Company established a settlement at the Cape in 1652. Among the first people held there was Autshumao, a Khoikhoi leader and interpreter who had dealt with European ships. He was sent to the island and later escaped by boat, one of the very few people to do so.

Over the following centuries, the island was used to imprison:

  • Political prisoners and exiles from the Dutch empire, including rulers and religious leaders from what is now Indonesia, who resisted Dutch rule. One, Sayed Abdurahman Moturu, is remembered by a shrine (kramat) on the island.
  • Xhosa leaders who resisted British expansion in the 19th century, including the prophet Makhanda (Nxele), who drowned in 1820 while trying to escape.
  • People with leprosy, from 1846 until the 1930s, when the island was used as a colony to isolate them, along with people deemed mentally ill and chronically sick.

During the Second World War, the island was fortified with guns to protect Cape Town's harbour.

The apartheid prison

In the early 1960s, after the Sharpeville massacre and the banning of the ANC and PAC, the apartheid government turned Robben Island into a maximum-security prison for political prisoners. Men convicted of fighting against apartheid were sent there, among them leaders of the ANC, the PAC and other movements.

Prisoners lived under harsh conditions:

  • Black prisoners were given short trousers, like boys, and less food than Coloured or Indian prisoners; this racial discrimination continued even in prison.
  • Many slept on mats on the concrete floor of small cells.
  • They were forced to do heavy labour in the lime quarry, where the glare of the white rock damaged many prisoners' eyesight, and in a stone quarry.
  • Letters and visits were severely restricted and censored.

Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela arrived on Robben Island in 1964, after the Rivonia Trial, where he and others were sentenced to life imprisonment. He was held in a small cell in Section B, the isolation block for leaders. He remained there until 1982, when he was moved to Pollsmoor Prison on the mainland. He was finally released in 1990.

Other prisoners included Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki, Ahmed Kathrada, Jacob Zuma and many more. The PAC leader Robert Sobukwe was held alone in a separate house on the island from 1963 to 1969, under a special law that allowed the government to keep extending his imprisonment, and was forbidden to talk to other prisoners.

"The University"

Despite the brutal conditions, prisoners turned Robben Island into what many called "the University". They organised secret study groups, taught each other to read and write, debated politics and history, and studied for degrees by correspondence when allowed. Older leaders mentored younger activists, and prisoners from different movements argued and learned from one another. Mandela later described how prisoners resisted by insisting on their dignity, demanding better treatment and refusing to be broken.

The prisoners also worked to win small improvements, such as long trousers and the right to study, through protests and hunger strikes. Many of those who later led democratic South Africa had spent years on the island.

From prison to museum

The last political prisoners left Robben Island in 1991, and the prison closed in 1996. In 1997, the island became a museum, and in 1999, UNESCO declared it a World Heritage Site, recognising its "triumph of the human spirit, of freedom and of democracy over oppression".

Today, visitors take a ferry from the Nelson Mandela Gateway at Cape Town's V&A Waterfront. They tour the island by bus, see the lime quarry, the leper graveyard, the kramat and Sobukwe's house, and visit the prison, where former political prisoners often act as guides, telling their own stories. Seeing Mandela's tiny cell is, for many, the most moving moment.

Remembering Mandela

Robben Island is closely tied to the memory of Mandela, whose birthday, 18 July, is celebrated around the world as Nelson Mandela International Day, as described in our story on Mandela Day.

Why it matters

Robben Island tells a long story of how power has used isolation to silence its opponents, from Khoikhoi leaders and Indonesian exiles to Xhosa prophets and apartheid's political prisoners. But it also tells a story of resistance, education and hope. The island where people were sent to be forgotten has become one of the most remembered places in Africa.

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