Robben Island

Lore & Background

Located at the entrance to Table Bay, Robben Island was first recorded by Vasco da Gama's fleet in 1497. For many years, it was used by Portuguese navigators, and later by English and Dutch sailors, as a refueling station. In 1654, settlers of the Dutch Cape Colony placed ewes and rams on the island, building a shed and shelter for livestock. Since the end of the 17th century, the island has been used for the incarceration of chiefly political prisoners. The Dutch settlers were the first to use it as a prison. The island's first prisoner was probably Autshumato in the mid-17th century.

Reader's Guide

Robben Island's significance lies in its long history as a site of incarceration, particularly for political prisoners opposing apartheid. The imprisonment of Nelson Mandela there for 18 years made the island a global symbol of the struggle against racial oppression. Two other former inmates, Kgalema Motlanthe and Jacob Zuma, were later elected President of South Africa. The island's role as a leper colony and its maritime hazards, with 31 known shipwrecks, add to its layered history. Since the end of apartheid, it has become a popular tourist destination, managed by Robben Island Museum as a living museum. Many tour guides are former prisoners. The island is often regarded as 'a symbol of oppression' by many black South Africans. Its UNESCO World Heritage status, granted in 1999, recognizes its importance to South Africa's political history and the development of a democratic society. The maximum security prison closed in 1991, and the medium security prison closed five years later.

Did You Know?

• Robben Island takes its name from the archaic Dutch word for seals (robben).
• Nelson Mandela was imprisoned on the island for 18 of his 27 years of imprisonment.
• The island was used as a leper colony starting in 1845, and lepers were initially free to leave.
• A total of 31 vessels are known to have been wrecked around Robben Island.

Geographic Character & Early Encounters

Robben Island sits roughly 6.9 kilometres west of Bloubergstrand, a flat, oval-shaped landmass in Table Bay just north of Cape Town. Measuring about 3.3 kilometres from north to south and 1.9 kilometres across, it covers 5.08 square kilometres and rises only a few metres above the sea, a remnant of an ancient erosion event that left the terrain remarkably level. Its name derives from the archaic Dutch word robben for seals, giving it the Afrikaans designation Robbeneiland, or Seal Island. The island first entered European records when Bartolomeu Dias spotted it in 1488, and for years it served as a refueling stop for Portuguese, English, and Dutch sailors navigating the southern African coast. In 1654, settlers of the Dutch Cape Colony brought their ewes and a handful of rams to the island, constructing a large shed and shelter. The isolation offered better protection against mainland predators, and the settlers also harvested seal skins and rendered boiled oil to supply the growing colony's needs.

Centuries of Confinement and Isolation

From the late seventeenth century onward, Robben Island functioned as a place of incarceration, a role it maintained until 1996. The Dutch were the first to imprison people there, and the earliest known detainee was likely a man named Autshumato in the mid-1600s. Political figures from the Dutch East Indies were also held on the island, including two Malagasy leaders, Massavana and Koesaaij, who survived a slave-ship mutiny on the Meermin; Koesaaij endured confinement for another twenty years. After the 1819 Grahamstown uprising, Xhosa leader Makanda Nxele was sentenced to life on the island and later drowned attempting to escape across Table Bay. Beginning in 1845, the site also housed a leper colony, initially on a voluntary basis, until the 1892 Leprosy Repression Act made admission compulsory and restricted movement. During the Second World War, heavy artillery was mounted on the island to defend Cape Town. Under apartheid, from 1961 onward, the government used the island to hold political prisoners and convicted criminals, a practice that continued until the maximum-security facility shut in 1991 and the medium-security prison closed in 1996.

Mandela and the Presidential Legacy

Nelson Mandela, the anti-apartheid lawyer and political activist, spent eighteen of his twenty-seven years of imprisonment on Robben Island before the fall of the apartheid regime and the arrival of full multi-racial democracy. His eventual release, Nobel Peace Prize, and election in 1994 as South Africa's first black president gave the island a global symbolic weight that no other site in the country quite matches. He served a single term from 1994 to 1999. The island's influence on South African leadership did not end with Mandela. Two other former Robben Island inmates went on to hold the presidency: Kgalema Motlanthe, who served from 2008 to 2009, and Jacob Zuma, who occupied the office from 2009 to 2018. Beyond the presidency, numerous other former prisoners have held a wide variety of political positions in the post-apartheid democracy. In 1982, former inmate Indres Naidoo published Island in Chains, the first published account of life inside the prison, giving the outside world a rare window into the daily realities of those held on the island.

Living Heritage and Global Recognition

Since the end of apartheid, Robben Island has transformed from a site of political repression into one of South Africa's most visited cultural landmarks. It holds dual designation as a South African National Heritage Site and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the latter status granted in 1999 in recognition of its significance to the nation's political history and the development of democratic society. The island is managed by the Robben Island Museum, which operates the grounds as a living museum open to the public year-round, weather permitting. Every year, thousands of visitors board ferries from the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront in Cape Town to tour the former prison cells and grounds. A distinctive feature of the visitor experience is that many of the guides are themselves former political prisoners, offering first-hand testimony. Administratively, the island functions as a suburb of the City of Cape Town, and all of its land is owned by the South African nation, with the sole exception of the island church. The Moturu Kramat, a sacred Muslim pilgrimage site built in 1969 to honour the exiled imam Sayed Abdurahman Moturu, remains a place of quiet reverence within this broader landscape of memory.