ROBBEN ISLAND :
It's an island one should personally experience and cannot be expressed in words (I mean it!). The island is only a few kilometers away from the waterfront; we took a ferry ride to get there. It's a simple flat little island by itself but the amount of history and emotional feelings it carries is immense.
In Dec 1999, the whole site was declared an UN world heritage site.It's a deeply atmospheric place with just the physical remains of what happened there for decades. It was "home" for Nelson Mandela, being imprisoned for 13 years. Previous "Robben islands prisoners" themselves took us around and were happy to answer all our questions. Every word they said was filled with emotions. Robben Island was used as prison during the white settlement. The most immoral and cruel acts took place deeply hurting and torturing the prisoners. The political prisoners, criminal prisoners and others had a pathetic lifestyle, where made to work in the quarries, tiny cells with buckets to use as toilet, insufficient clothes to wear, made to sleep on the floor, not all were lucky to continue with education. To worsen it more, racism played an important role. The black prisoners were treated more badly than the white prisoners. Well, it took number of strikes, arguments, debates and finally today the island is free of prisoners and has been converted into a museum. Today people from all over the world visit the place and hope there is never again another robben island. In two and a half hour bus tour within the island - we could see the place used during the island's stint as a leper colony, the prisons/cells, the offices, the quarry etc. Well, what remains now is a great part of the history and just walking around to listen to the silence is very moving. Most of the buildings date back to the Second World War. Under the apartheid system, the people of South Africa including the prisoners were segregated according to their skin color. The system was racist, a discriminatory and an unfair one. The people who survived this kind of torture from the prison has only made them stronger. 