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 Author: Charlene Smith
Far-reaching political changes in South Africa have re-ignited much interest in Robben Island, particularly as the former South African President, Nelson Mandela, was imprisoned there for so long. This is an informative guide to one of the most controversial places in the country. Besides covering its political history, the book also discusses Robben Island as a key naval and military base during World War II, its environment, flora and fauna, the Xhosa chiefs interred on the island in the 19th century, the lives of the Robben warders, its shipwrecks, escapes and many tourist attractions. Charlene Smith has over 20 years' experience as a political writer and documentary maker for CBC, CBS and ABC. She is the author of Robben Island, published in 1997 by Struik and reprinted many times. She lives in Greenside, Johannesburg.
Who can be unmoved on first hearing of its inhabitants - the Lawbreakers, the Lunatics and the Lepers! Few places so small and insignificant looking can boast of having played so important a part in the history of a vast multitude of people. I make no apology, therefore, for calling the attention of the reading public to the Island's early history, I claim for it more than a momentary passing attention; I call for respectful and reverential regard. 'THE EARLY HISTORY OF ROBBEN ISLAND' BY G.F. GRESLEY, In its small, wave-beaten boundaries Robben Island holds the memories of a nation and the legends of the greatest and weakest of South Africans. The Island has been the subject of books, poems, plays and a vast oral mythology. Better known as 'Esiquithini' (the Island) to the three generations of political prisoners who occupied it in the second half of the 20th century, it carries the scars of four centuries of human suffering and triumph. Its 12-kilometre circumference is like a small heart cut from the mainland bosom that for years monitored and regulated the pulse of a nation. For most of Nelson Mandela's 27 years in jail, he lived on the Island. It was his suffering that made Robben Island a household word and a symbol of apartheid evil. He says now that had he been by himself he would have impressed no-one, 'but I was in the company of highly developed human beings. We spoke with each other about our problems and these discussions gave us self-confidence and uplifted us spiritually, freeing us from the negative obsessional side of life in prison.' And perhaps that shared experience, the learning, the knowledge that all are ultimately co-dependent and negotiation is more fruitful than conflict, honed wisdom and led to the evolution of South Africa's greatest sons. The Island is 11 kilometres from Cape Town across a bitterly cold sea that snaps at the hulls of ships. Thick islands of kelp bob in the waters close to the shale beaches, and crayfish, lobster and perlemoen drift in its small inlets. It is a sea that arouses the conqueror in many, and usually delivers failure. Since at least the turn of the 19th century, swimmers have tried to beat the cold and the tides; in 1909 and 1926 it was women who managed to make the swim across the bay without the benefit of wetsuits. On May 11, 1993, University These swimming feats probably mean that Robben Island may have had more succesful escapes than its jailers have cared to admit. Did, as an example, 20-year-old Jan Kamfer, the only recorded escapee in the 20th century, die in the icy waters after he stole a paddleski from outside a warder's house on March 8, 1985, and paddled furiously to the low, beckoning finger of Bloubergstrand? He could not have chosen more perfect conditions. The Port Captain's office said the wind in Table Bay at the time of the escape was south-easterly and the swells small. It was possible for a person on a paddleski to make it to the mainland. A massive sea and air manhunt was launched after Kamfer failed to respond at evening roll call and a paddleski was discovered to be missing. On March 11, prison officials said Kamfer had certainly drowned, after all, they had found no trace of him. They pointed out that the sea around the Island is infested with sharks and the water, they claimed, cold enough to kill a man in 45 minutes (a claim which early 20th-century swimming conquests proved fallacious). Sergeant Koos Vrey, who worked on the Island when Kamfer escaped, said the paddleski had a hole in it. He doesn't believe Kamfer's escape was succesful, and even if the paddleski remained afloat, he said, 'at that time there were three large sharks we often saw around the Island; one was a shark of about 5,5 metres'. Maybe Kamfer, like Langman, showed nothing is impossible with skill and a strong will. But that is not always enough; Xhosa prophet Nxele Makana and 30 fellow prisoners were less fortunate. They drowned during an escape attempt in 1820, after a small boat they had stolen from whaler John Murray capsized close to Bloubergstrand. Africanists among the political prisoners of the 1960s to the 1990s called the island Makana Island and claim his ghost walks the Island still. A ROCKY OUTPOST Robben Island is flat, and one is surprised that monstrous waves have not reclaimed it. At its highest point it is 30 metres above sea level and receives only 300 millimetres of rain a year. The underlying rock is blue slate of the Malmesbury Series, covered by blown coastal sands and a dusting of limestone. Generations of bleached, crushed shells make the white Island sand glisten with an almost unbearable sheen. When Nelson Mandela underwent cataract surgery in July 1994, surgeon Percy Amoils said the operation was complicated by the fact that his tear ducts were corroded by years of exposure to lime-stone dust from his labours in the quarry. Roads on the Island are made either of dirt or of stone chiselled by political prisoners in the quarries and then tarred. Scattered across the Island are wattle, bluegum, pine, cypress, tamarisk, manitoku and acacia trees, none of which are indigenous. Most trees were imported by seafarers, and were planted between 1892 and 1912. The remaining natural veld was destroyed to make way for fortifications during the Second World War. Bartholomeu Dias was possibly the first mariner to land at Robben Island, in 1488. His second-in-command, Joao del Infanto, was, according to historical records, the first white man to set foot on the Island. Other Portuguese followed in 1502, some living in a large cave which they named Portugal. For aeons before the arrival of Europeans, however, the Khoi and their antecendents had ferried back and forth from the mainland to the Island. Joris van Spilbergen named it Isia de Cornelia after his mother, in 1601. He left two dassies on the Island that his crew had removed from Dassen Island. The dassies thrived and formed the basis of an important meat supply for later generations of seamen. Most mariners referred to the Island as either penguin, seal or Robben Island. In 1611, Jacob Ie Maire and some sailors were left on the Island by Ie Maire's father, Isaac, to club seals for pelts and hunt whales for their blubber. As many as 4005 seal skins were exported to Europe from the Island during the early 17th century. Sir Thomas Herbert, the English explorer, first raised the idea of a victualling station in the Cape. As a consequence, in 1614, at the special request of the English East India Company, 10 convicts were sent to establish a settlement. Little interest was shown in the island after this debacle, other than as a place where seafarers left messages and notes to each other under rocks, or alighted to harvest dassies, seals or the fat-tailed sheep bartered from the Khoi and left to multiply on the Island. But the British had sketched the Island's destiny as a place of banishment. In March 1636, Hendrik Brouwer, former governor-general of the Dutch East Indies, banished to Robben Island the ringleaders of an attempted mutiny. Sixteen years later, ship's surgeon Jan van Riebeeck succesfully colonised the Cape for the Dutch East India Company. The Island became a larder for the early colonists, a place where they could hunt animals and birds, collect eggs, grow crops and fatten livestock. But the colonists quickly denuded the Island of its natural wealth. In 1654, Van Riebeeck issued South Africa's first conservation decree, banning the further slaughter of the dwindling colonies of sea birds. Settlers used stone from the Island for building material. Its shells were crushed and burnt in a kiln erected in 1654 to produce lime, used for paint and plaster. These were the first industries of the colonial Cape. The first cornerstones of the Castle were cut on Robben Island, and were laid by Governor Zacharias Wagnaar on January 22, 1666. Slaves hewed stone and lime from the Island while soldiers did the building. But Van Riebeeck confirmed the Island's role as a place of banishment when he exiled his wily interpreter Autshumao (or Herry) there in 1658, together with two other Khoi, Simon Boubou and Khamy or Van Cou. The Dutch valued the Island as the British had, because it was difficult to escape from and because it concealed dreadful conditions. Some years later Herry's beautiful niece, Krotoa (or Eva), who grew up as a favoured maidservant in the Van Riebeeck household from the age of 10, married the Dutch surgeon and explorer Pieter van Meerhofon June 2, 1664. The wedding was a lavish celebration befitting a favoured child; she was 21, he 27. (A mere 20 years later, however, under Governor Simon van der Stel - a Mauritian Creole - marriage between whites and freed slaves of 'full colour' was prohibited, although whites could marry 'half-breeds if they chose', but by then tragedy had already visited the Van Meerhof couple.) The couple moved to the Island a year later, when Van Meerhof became its superintendent. Their predecessors were Jan Zacharias and his Bengali wife. Van Meerhof had special instructions to rid the Island of vipers, snakes and spiders, but was killed during a visit to Madagascar two years later. A bereft Eva returned to the mainland with her three children. The devastated widow began drinking and sleeping around; once she was found naked, smoking a pipe on a beach. On another occasion she abandoned her children at the Pottery House to live at a Khoi encampment. She was found and banished to Robben Island - the first of many occasions - before she died at the age of 31. Her children grew up with foster parents in Mauritius, and two of them later returned to the Cape. Her son died shortly after his return but her daughter married a wealthy farmer called Piet Zaaiman.
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