Again I'm apologizing in advance for the long post, but I promise it's interesting!
Yesterday was our first day back in the classroom at Lynedoch after five weeks without the kids. It was great to see them again, but it’s crazy to think that we only have one more day of lessons and then one day of ‘termination activities’ as Grant calls it. I prefer ‘goodbye party’ though. We had the kids write about what they wanted to be when they grow up and then we had a discussion about the steps they’ll have to take to get there. It went really well and I think the sixth grade teacher really liked our lesson about self-respect. We talked to the kids about using the word ‘baas’, which is Afrikaans for boss. Many black and colored people use it when addressing white people, but it denoted inferiority. The kids understood that it’s a term left over from the apartheid era, but it’s a word that they began using as young children so it’s a tricky thing. There’s still two or three farm owners in the Stellenbosch area who insist that the black farmers call them ‘baas,’ but most have moved beyond that term. I’m sure some of the kids will still throw the word around when talking to white people, and specifically Boers (literally translated means farmer, but was used to refer to all Afrikaners during apartheid), but hopefully a few of them will think twice about it in the future.
In other news, I spent last weekend in Cape Town and had a lot of fun. On Saturday morning we left Stellenbosch for our AIFS excursion to Robben Island where Nelson Mandela served the majority of his 27 year imprisonment, alongside thousands of other political prisoners. After our 20 minute ferry ride from the waterfront, we arrived on the island that sits about 8 miles from the mainland. All of the tour guides are ex-prisoners which adds a really meaningful dimension to the experience. Our guide’s name was Benjamin and he had spent 11 years on Robben Island, from 1980 to 1991. Early on in the tour he gave us a chance to ask questions and someone inquired about the charges that had been placed on him in 1980. He first briefly mentioned that he’d been a part of the Soweto Uprising on June 16, 1976, which we all found to be absolutely incredible because it was such a critical event in the anti-apartheid movement. For those who don’t know about it, on this day a group of 15,000 school children decided to peacefully protest the government’s new policy which mandated that 50% of classes be taught in Afrikaans, the language of the oppressor. The police began shooting at the kids and by the time things settled down 23 students had been killed and hundreds more injured. Many children never returned to school after that, thus this so-called ‘lost generation’ missed out on an education. Pictures of the violence appeared in newspapers around the world and drew international attention to the anti-apartheid struggle. But, back to Benjamin our tour guide, the very next day he sadly witnessed his pregnant girlfriend’s murder and decided that he needed to play a bigger role in the movement. He joined the military arm of the ANC and fled to Germany where he was trained in explosives. In 1980 he was set to bomb a government building in Pretoria, but he miscalculated and the mission failed. Benjamin and eight others were stopped by officials who searched their truck and found enough evidence to try them all for high treason. Two of the nine men were put to death and the other seven received between 10 years to life in prison. Eleven years later, in 1991, Benjamin was a member of the last group to be released from Robben Island.
In other news, I spent last weekend in Cape Town and had a lot of fun. On Saturday morning we left Stellenbosch for our AIFS excursion to Robben Island where Nelson Mandela served the majority of his 27 year imprisonment, alongside thousands of other political prisoners. After our 20 minute ferry ride from the waterfront, we arrived on the island that sits about 8 miles from the mainland. All of the tour guides are ex-prisoners which adds a really meaningful dimension to the experience. Our guide’s name was Benjamin and he had spent 11 years on Robben Island, from 1980 to 1991. Early on in the tour he gave us a chance to ask questions and someone inquired about the charges that had been placed on him in 1980. He first briefly mentioned that he’d been a part of the Soweto Uprising on June 16, 1976, which we all found to be absolutely incredible because it was such a critical event in the anti-apartheid movement. For those who don’t know about it, on this day a group of 15,000 school children decided to peacefully protest the government’s new policy which mandated that 50% of classes be taught in Afrikaans, the language of the oppressor. The police began shooting at the kids and by the time things settled down 23 students had been killed and hundreds more injured. Many children never returned to school after that, thus this so-called ‘lost generation’ missed out on an education. Pictures of the violence appeared in newspapers around the world and drew international attention to the anti-apartheid struggle. But, back to Benjamin our tour guide, the very next day he sadly witnessed his pregnant girlfriend’s murder and decided that he needed to play a bigger role in the movement. He joined the military arm of the ANC and fled to Germany where he was trained in explosives. In 1980 he was set to bomb a government building in Pretoria, but he miscalculated and the mission failed. Benjamin and eight others were stopped by officials who searched their truck and found enough evidence to try them all for high treason. Two of the nine men were put to death and the other seven received between 10 years to life in prison. Eleven years later, in 1991, Benjamin was a member of the last group to be released from Robben Island.
During the tour of the prison we saw the communal houses where 30-40 men shared a big room as well as the single cell houses. Beds weren’t introduced to the prison until the 1980’s, which means Mandela slept on the cement floor for the first 20 years of his imprisonment. Speaking of, we also got to see Mandela’s cell (see the picture below). After walking around the prison we parted ways with Benjamin and got on a bus for our tour of the rest of the island. Before serving as a home to political prisoners, Robben Island was a place of banishment for anyone in the country suffering from leprosy so there’s a big Leper Graveyard nearby. There are roughly 200 people who live on the island today, so there’s a small village with houses, a church, a supermarket, and a school that has 18 students and 2 teachers. I would never want to live on the island, though the views of Cape Town and Table Mountain are spectacular.
We drove by the Robert Sobukwe House, named for a former prisoner. Sobukwe founded the Pan African Congress, which called for ‘South Africa for the Africans.’ He had originally supported the ideas of the ANC, but split with them and rejected any model that suggested blacks working with whites to form a non-racial society. On March 21, 1960 he led a nationwide protest in which blacks turned their pass books in to the police and asked to be arrested. The pass books were a form of identification that all non-whites was required to carry at all times as they stipulated where in the country you were allowed to go. Sobukwe was charged with incitement and imprisoned for three years. When those three years were expired though, the government still feared the power that this man had, so they passed the General Law Amendment Act (or ‘Sobukwe Clause’) that stated an imprisonment could be renewed annually. From 1963-1969 he lived in a house by himself on Robben Island, where he was allowed to read and eat as he pleased, but communication with anyone was forbidden. He had seven prison guards and seven dogs watching his house 24 hours a day, and the guards were changed every 3 months so that no one developed a relationship with him. A once intelligent and articulate man, Sobukwe became mentally ill after years of only talking to himself. It was clear that his health was declining and government officials didn’t want him to die in their care, so in 1969 he was released on house arrest but was required to live far from his family. He died in 1978 at the age of 53, and while most accounts say that he had lung cancer there’s speculation that he was slowly poisoned. The house that he lived in on the island is shown below, and the row of cells behind the house were for all the guard dogs.
Lastly, we also got to see the infamous lime quarry where the prisoners were forced to do meaningless hard labor for 10 hours a day in the summer and 8 hours in the winter. There’s no protection from the heat in the quarry and the men were not allowed to wear hats or sunglasses. As a result of the sun bouncing off the limestone, many of the prisoners suffered from serious eye problems. Mandela underwent several surgeries after being released and to this day he cannot shed a tear because his tear ducts were destroyed. There’s one small cave in the quarry where the men were allowed to sit and eat their lunch, and this was really their only chance to talk to one another because most were kept in single cells and no talking was allowed while working. They often discussed politics during lunch and many of the ideas/policies that the ANC enacted in the 1990’s were formulated inside that cave (on the left side of the picture).
After stopping for some picture opportunities by the water, we headed back to the ferry and left the island. The tours of both the prison and the island were really interesting and thought-provoking. It felt like I was actually seeing the history that I’ve been learning about for the past ten weeks.
Once we got back to the mainland, some of us took a taxi to Long Street where we checked in to a backpacker’s for the night. Nine of us had decided to stay in the city and attend the under-20 national team’s soccer tournament in the new World Cup Stadium. For less than $5 we got to watch South Africa vs. Nigeria then Ghana vs. Brazil. Both games were a little more sloppy than I was expecting and, unfortunately, Nigeria and Brazil were victorious. It was really awesome to see the inside of Green Point Stadium though – everything is so new and clean and the games seemed to run smoothly. There will be one more event in the stadium before the city of Cape Town hands it over to FIFA in May.
After the games we walked about a mile back to Long Street and got dinner at Mama Africa. I had a headache all afternoon/evening and at this point it turned into a bad stomachache and the chills so I went to bed right after dinner while most of my friends went out to a few bars. In the morning we packed up, got some delicious breakfast, and headed to the Planetarium for a show about the night sky and constellations. The 40 minute show was really cool, but the museum that houses the Planetarium was even better. There were tons of interesting exhibits about animals, but my favorite part was the collection of photos from the Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition. It’s an international competition that yields dozens of amazing photographs of both nature and animals. Below are a few of my favorites that I took from the website, but click the link above if you want to see the rest. After exploring the museum some more we caught the train back to Stellenbosch.
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