I was both smart and lucky, and had secured tickets to Robben Island -- which we learned today (day 3) means "Seal Island" in Dutch. (More on the famed Seal Island of False Bay in another post.) The trip to Robben Island for most days and times were sold out, but I managed to snag three of the last twelve tickets for the 2pm boat trip across the 12 kilometers.
Robben Island is most famous as the location where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for most of his 27 years he spent as a political prisoner. It also held hundreds of other black political prisoners. We took a very pleasant trip on the boat across Table Bay. Robben Island had been a place of exile for lepers and prisoners long before it was designated the prison island for anti-apartheid leaders.
As wrong as liberals were about Commies in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and Cuba in the 1970s and 1980s, conservatives were wrong about South Africa during the same time frame. While I was never a supporter of the South African apartheid regime at the time, I certainly was not outraged. I was wrong.
Two things stand out:
1. Touring Robben Island was amazing. More on that in another post to follow, but we had amazing views back towards Cape Town, Table Mountain, Lion's Head, etc.
2. It's amazing to us how forgiving Mandela and the other ANC leaders were toward their tormentors. For the country not to blow apart in a race war after they were freed is stunning. This is not to say that everything is racially hunky-dory -- we don't think so, and we have no idea. But, it's a lot better than what has happened in Zimbabwe, for instance.
Lots more on Robben Island in the next posting. I do want to stress that it was very moving.
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