The boat tour to Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela spent 18 of his 27 years in prison, is obviously a Cape Town must-do. The tours of the cell blocks are led by former prisoners, who give you the low-down on all the nasty details–the lack of warm clothing or windows, the beatings they’d get if they folded their blankets the wrong way, the tennis balls they used to send messages across cell blocks, and the different rations you’d receive depending on whether you were ‘Coloured’ or ‘Bantu’.
The picture, though it doesn’t look like much, was of a place more intriguing for me than the prison. This is the lime quarry where the political prisoners did their hard labor, every day, rain or shine. Shine was usually worse. The lime was so bright, and gave off such a fine dust, that many of the prisoners have needed multiple eye surgeries since their release. How much digging did they do? The pile of stones shows where the quarry began when the prisoners started digging.
That small cave is where the prisoners used to meet for their discussions at “Mandela University”. It was also the only place where the prisoners were allowed to eat, and go to the bathroom. Our tour guide believed that most of South Africa’s modern constitution was worked out in that humble cave.
