Both the blacks and white were buried differently. “Couples who were black and white were separated once they die. The white with the white and the black with the blacks
Emmanuel Ukudolo I Wednesday, April 30, 2025
ROBBEN ISLAND, Cape Town, South Africa – It was a journey of about 40 minutes from the harbour, the Gateway to Robben Island on Victoria Wharf on the V&A Waterfront in Cape town.
It was a bumpy ride on high seas, laced with different experiences for my family and the over 162 other tourists aboard the massive boat that brought us safely to Robben Island. It was a journey laced with history of the Island with a focus on notable political prisoners like the late Nelson Mandela and the orator and firebrand speaker, Robert Sobukwe and the rest. I had to battle with stomach troubles just like my lovely and very caring wife almost throwing up during the journey but had to take solace in a short nap.
Robben Island is a very cool island with the temperature dropping as low as 22 degrees centigrade. The Island was wet on arrival as we struggle to confront the very cold wind blowing from the sea across the Island.
Soon we were divided into a group of 35, into each of the four buses waiting to take us on a trip around the Island in company of a bus captain who is knowledgeable about the island. The captain, Elias is a super fan of Robert Sobukwe provided the initial detailed tips about the trip as we drove along the Island before handing over to Tom Moses, who endured atrocities under the white apartheid regime with the late Nelson Mandela.
Robert Sobukwe, a firebrand political prisoner who choose to lecture the apartheid regime about his rights instead of answering the questions guilty or not guilty is the only South Africa prisoner get on a separate jail surrounded with wild dogs away from the main prison to prevent him from radicalizing other political prisoners.
Another political prisoner, Elias spoke of that was separated from others was a Muslim, Sheikh Madura, who was sent to the Island by the Portuguese and is now credited with berthing Islam in South Africa. He died in the Island with his beautiful tomb now viewed as a sacred shrine in Robben Island where Muslims visit and worship as an annual ritual.
Elias also took questions from my son, Jaydene who demanded to know why Nelson Mandela was made a political prisoner on the Island. His answers: Mandela raised a private army to overthrow the apartheid regime and was charged with sabotage and treason.
As we drove through the graveyard, he told us that even the dead were discriminated against during apartheid. ” Both the blacks and white were buried differently. “Couples who were black and white were separated once they die. The white with the white and the black with the blacks”, he said.
Tom Moses was brought into the island at 25 and he suffered atrocities until the end of the apartheid regime. He is now in his late 70s but very tall with an Afro hair dotted with white strands.
His left hand appears suspended across his frame unable to straighten up and limps as he walks, all signs of the torture he and his colleagues went through on the island as political prisoners.
But he is very composed as he tells the story, occasionally warning us not to give way to tears in his narration of the sordid ordeal he and others suffered on the Island.
He told us of how two young boys 15 were brought to the island during the period and were sent to criminals by the young white wardens for sexual molestation. He said it was impossible to escape as it is a Herculean task to swim a distance of over 10 kilometers of very cold water with wild animals, compounded with the fact that the Island was paraded by wild dogs and helicopters.
He said only political prisoners who refused to talk to divulge their mode of operation landed on the island while those who choose to talk must continue or be killed. Tom said one of the prisoners who was attacked by wild dogs turned green and his leg was eventually amputated and that his family was never told the truth even now that he is dead.
He said all the prisons were built by prisoners who didn’t know what they were building until the work was completed.
He took us from one prison to the other telling us stories of how they slept with buckets of poop on mats on the bare cold floor until the 70s when the first beds, double deckers were brought in.
The trip ended with Dr. Nelson Mandela’s cell with his red pooh bucket, pillow and matt still intact, Cell Nos 4 as you enter his prison and there after we were left to embark on a short journey of freedom.
Today, there are no prisoners on Robben Island. The prisons were closed some decades back with the Island now known as Robben Island Museum and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Tom Moses told us in tears that though he has forgiven those who committed the atrocities, every day he continues to wake up with memories of what he described as nightmares on the Island.
He is bitter that some of those who survived the torture on the Island were never catered for but were frustrated and later went into crimes that led to their untimely death.
For him, the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission was nothing but a farce.
He said the commission did not do what it was expected to do and that justice was never done and yet to be done to them who gave up their lives for South Africa.
He believes that is South Africa as it is today is still not totally free.
