Accommodation South Africa Robben Island

Robben Island (Robbeneiland) is an island in Table Bay, 7-11 km off the coast from Cape Town, South Africa. The name is Dutch for "seal island". Robben Island is roughly oval in shape and about a kilometer wide. It is flat and only a few metres above sea level, as a result of an ancient erosion event.

HISTORY OF ROBBEN ISLAND

Robben Island was first inhabited thousands of years ago by stone age people, at a time when sea levels were considerably lower than they are today and people could walk to it. It was then a flat-topped hill. Towards the end of the last Ice Age the melting of the ancient ice caps caused sea levels to rise and the land around the island was flooded by the ocean. Since the end of the 17th century, Robben Island has been used to isolate certain people — mainly prisoners — and amongst its first permanent inhabitants were political leaders from various Dutch colonies, including Indonesia.

From 1836 to 1931 the island was used as a leper colony. During the Second World War, the island was fortified and guns were installed as part of the defences for Cape Town.

Robben Island became a maximum security prison in 1959. Between 1961 and 1991, over three thousand men were incarcerated here as political prisoners, including Nelson Mandela.

During the time that the island was a prison, security was very tight and it was off limits to almost all civilians, including fishermen. Before about 1980 almost no-one, even among inhabitants of Cape Town had set foot on the island. It is not generally known that the use of the island as a prison was greatly inhibited for centuries by a lack of fresh water. The island is arid, with low scrubby vegetation and has no watercourses. Boreholes were drilled in the first half of the 20th century but in due course the fragile water table was invaded by sea water and the bores became useless. Sometime after 1965 a pipeline was laid on the bottom of the ocean from Cape Town.

Frederik Willem de Klerk initiated the removal of political prisoners in June of 1990, with the last gone by May of the following year. The last of the non-political prisoners (who had always been held separately from political prisoners) left the island in 1996, and it became a museum in 1997.

ROBBEN ISLAND TODAY

All the land on the island is owned by the State, with the exception of the island church.

Today the island is a popular tourist destination and was declared a World Heritage Site in 1999. It is reached by ferry from the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront in Cape Town and is open throughout the year, weather permitting. Tours of the island and prison are led by guides who were formerly prisoners there. Robben Island Museum operates as a site or living museum.