issue 4 digital copy

Heritage Travel
prisoners who ever successfully managed to escape off the island,
it is said.
His niece, Krotoa, also known as Eva, also worked for Van Riebeeck
and married a European settler, attaining a high social position
in the colony. She and her family lived on Robben Island for
several years. Much later, after her husband’s death, she became
despondent and fell out with the Dutch authorities who banished
her to Robben Island.
Robben Island Prison where Nelson Mandela was held captive / Darrenp - Shutterstock.com
Robben Island
Who needs any introduction to this famous little island in the
middle of Cape Town’s Table Bay?
It is of course the landmark that became globally famous with the
imprisonment there of Nelson Mandela and other heroes of South
Africa’s liberation struggle. But its amazing, if not sad history goes
back much further than that. Between the 17th and 20th centuries,
the island was used variously as a prison, including for political
prisoners, a place of banishment, a hospital for groups considered
socially unacceptable at the time, such as lepers, and as a military
base. Today it serves as a centre of cultural and historical education
and interest.
Subsequently the island became the prison home of many political
prisoners, among them Imam Abdullah ibn Kadi Abdus Salaam,
known as Tuan Guru, a Prince from Tidore in the Ternate Islands of
Indonesia. While imprisoned on Robben Island by the Dutch, Tuan
Guru wrote several copies of the holy Qur’an from memory, one
of which is preserved and on display in Cape Town’s Dorp Street
mosque. In 1969 the Moturu Kramat, now a sacred site for Muslim
pilgrimage on Robben Island, was built to commemorate another
Muslim prisoner of the island, Sayed Abdurahman Moturu, the
Prince of Madura.
No less than three of the island prison’s former inmates went on
to become president of South Africa, namely Nelson Mandela,
Kgalema Motlanthe and Jacob Zuma.
The island, with its nearby submerged rocks and reefs, is also
something of a maritime hazard, and its surrounding waters have
become a graveyard of shipwrecks, with upward of 24 ships having
found their final resting place here.
The island was long known to and visited by the original Khoikhoi
inhabitants of the region. One of its earliest permanent inhabitants
was Autshumato, also known as Herry die Strandloper (beach
walker), who was a leader of the Gorinhaikonas Khoikhoi clan,
dubbed Strandlopers by the Dutch, who lived along the beach
areas of Cape Town, between today’s Paarden Island and Sea Point.
In 1630 he was taken to Bantam in the East by an English ship and
returned to the Cape a year later, having learned to speak Dutch
and English in the meantime. It is said that in 1632, Autshumato
moved to Robben Island with several others of his people where he
worked as postman, interpreter and liaison for passing European
ships, moving back to the mainland 8 years later.
When Jan van Riebeeck arrived at the Cape in 1652 to establish a
Dutch settlement, Autshumato worked as an interpreter for Van
Riebeeck and also promoted trade between his people and the
Dutch. But in 1658, after he waged war against Van Riebeeck’s
settlers when he tried to reclaim cattle unfairly taken from his clan,
he and two of his followers became Robben Island’s first prisoners.
A year later he and one of the other prisoners became the only
Robben Island prison, part of a significant SA heritage site. / Mark52 - Shutterstock.com
In 1806 a Scottish whaler, John Murray, established a whaling
station on the north-eastern shore of the island that became
known as Murray’s Bay, where the present-day Murray’s Bay
Harbour was constructed in 1939–40 to serve the prison. A few
years later, in 1819, after an uprising that led to the 5th Xhosa
War in the Eastern Cape, the Xhosa leader Makanda Nxele was
sentenced to life imprisonment on the island. He drowned trying
to escape. Later the island was used as a leper colony, and by
the time of the Second World War the island was fortified with a
military base and large guns to defend Cape Town.
From 1961 onwards, Robben Island became the prison home of
Nelson Mandela, Robert Sobukwe and other leading figures of the
liberation movements, the ANC and PAC. The prison was closed
down between 1991 and 1995 and is now a museum where visitors
are taken on guided tours by former inmates. The island is also
home to South Africa’s first lighthouse – a high-lying part of the
island where Van Riebeeck ordered a permanent fire to be lit as a
MZANZI TRAVEL| www.mzanzitravel.co.za|ISSUE 4 | 29