In the presence of a hero

Today Ralph and I met a remarkable man and the experience moved us both tremendously.

We took a ferry this afternoon to Robben Island, the maximum security prison where the Apartheid government of South Africa housed political prisoners.  Our tour guide was a man in his early 30’s who was a prisoner on Robben Island for 5 years in the late 1980’s.  He was an 18 year old boy when he was sent to prison, after being convicted of sabotage. His crime?  He and 4 other young men fire-bombed a municipal building in their township in the middle of the night.  He was very careful to say that there had never been any intention of harming any one.  That’s why they did the deed in the middle of the night, when the building was closed and unoccupied.  Their intention was to destroy the paper records that were kept in the building.

The Apartheid regime, much like the Nazis, was very organized.  Every black person had a “pass book” which stated what areas s/he could be in and at what hours.  Any person stopped by the police who did not have the appropriate pass for the time and place they were stopped was subject to a 3-6 month prison term, depending on the whim of the judge, without benefit of a trial.  This system of passes was among the most onerous aspects of Apartheid and a source of constant terror to everyone.  Many people broke the law to get to a job so they could feed their families.  Getting permission to go to a new area or to stay later in a permitted area meant days of standing in long lines at the local municipal building, after which a government official would decide your fate.  The official records of all the “pass books” for everyone in the entire township were in that municipal building.  Destroying those records would have created havoc for the police as they tried to enforce the pass law.  That’s why our guide, the former prisoner, attempted to burn down the building.  To quote him:  “We had two aims.  (1) To destroy the records in the municipal building; and (2) not to be seen.  We succeeded in the first.  Unfortunately we did not succeed in the second.”

The conditions in the prison were about what you would imagine.  Like Alcatraz, Robben Island is close enough to Cape Town that the prisoners could see the free world, if they could see over the prison walls at all.  The leaders of the political resistance were initially held in very small cells 23 hours a day.  Nelson Mandela spent 6 years in this cell, sleeping on that straw mat on the cement floor and relieving himself in that bucket on the left.  International pressure eventually forced the South African government to improve conditions somewhat.  The prisoners were put to work 9 hours a day in the prison yard, working with small hammers breaking big stones into gravel.  They didn’t mind.  This was a heck of an improvement over 23 hours a day in a 6x8 cell. 

Our guide, not being a leader of the resistance but merely a foot soldier, was housed in a communal cell like this one, designed to hold 30 men but which sometimes had 50 men incarcerated.

Some people convicted of sabotage were sentenced to life imprisonment, so our guide was literally taking his life in his hands when he joined the resistance.  That this young man risked his life to fight an evil regime  is not the remarkable part of the story though.  What touched me was the man’s apparent complete lack of bitterness.  He emphasized again and again that not every white person in South Africa backed the Apartheid regime.  He spoke frequently about the white political prisoners (who, by the way, were not held at Robben Island.  No mixing of races, even among criminals.).  He told us that the Apartheid regime completely controlled the mass media and thus he believes white South Africans when they say they had no idea that the government was as cruel and oppressive as it was.

Our guide was eloquent and frank when he talked about the challenges of “this young democracy”.  There is huge unemployment.  Crime in the big cities (Cape Town excepted) is rampant.  There is an economic gulf a mile wide between the prosperous (mainly white) South Africans and the (mainly black) desperately poor South Africans.  “Nonetheless,” he said, and I am paraphrasing, “I am hopeful.  I have seen in my lifetime what can be accomplished when people of good will from all over the world band together for a common righteous purpose.  This is the lesson we should all learn from the end of Apartheid.  We must remember the injustices of the past and use them as a compass for our future.  We need to concentrate on the here and now.  All South Africans want the same things – health, education, prosperity --  for our children.  We have a beautiful country, rich in natural resources.  We just need to recognize our common goals and get down to work.”

There were tears in my eyes as I filed out the prison gate to walk back to the ferry to Cape Town.