Robben Island is a flat oval of about five square kilometres in Table Bay, roughly seven kilometres off Bloubergstrand to the north of Cape Town, and only a few metres above the sea. It was created by an ancient erosion event, which is the geological way of saying it is a low, dry, treeless rock with a lighthouse on it, and for several hundred years that was exactly what made it useful: somewhere to put people you did not want on the mainland.
Its last and most famous use was as a prison for opponents of apartheid, which it was until 1996. Nelson Mandela spent eighteen of his twenty-seven years there, breaking limestone in the quarry, and two of the presidents who followed him had also been held on the island. Today it is a museum, a nature reserve and one of the most visited sites in the country.
- From the mainland, Bloubergstrand
- 6.9 km
- Size of the island
- 5 km²
- Of Mandela’s sentence served here
- 18 years
- For the whole tour
- 3.5 hours
The tour, and how it works
The tours leave from the Nelson Mandela Gateway at the V&A Waterfront, three times a day, and take about three and a half hours in total. The ferry across is part of the experience: the bay can be rough, it can be cold, and on a windy day it does not sail at all, which is why the museum asks you to check before travelling and why nobody sensible makes this the only plan for a day.
On the island the visit is in two parts. A bus takes you around the sites: the leper graveyard from the island’s earlier life as a place of isolation, the lime quarry where the prisoners worked, Robert Sobukwe’s house, the Bluestone quarry, and the army and navy bunkers from the Second World War. Then you walk through the maximum security prison with a guide who was imprisoned there, and the tour ends at Mandela’s cell, which is small, plain and exactly as advertised.
Why the guides matter
The thing that makes Robben Island different from every other prison museum is that the people explaining it were inside it. The accounts of the quarry, the rations, the letters and the small daily negotiations of prison life are first-hand, and they are delivered without much drama, which is more effective than any exhibition panel.
That is also why this is not a light afternoon. Most people come off the ferry quiet, and it is worth planning the rest of the day accordingly: a walk along the Waterfront, a coffee somewhere, and no museum immediately afterwards.
The crossing, and the bay
The ferry is a half hour each way in good conditions, and it is part of the visit rather than a transfer. Table Bay is a working bay with a long history of wrecks, which is why there is a lighthouse on the island at all, and it can be rough: the boats do not sail in high wind or heavy swell, and the museum cancels rather than braves it.
If the weather is kind, the view is the reward. You leave the Waterfront with the city and the mountain behind you, and Robben Island grows from a smudge on the horizon into a flat grey-green plate with a lighthouse at one end and the prison buildings strung along the shore. Coming back, Table Mountain fills the whole horizon, which is the view every prisoner had on the rare occasions they were allowed to see the mainland.
Seals give the island its name, Dutch for seal, and there are colonies on the rocks, along with African penguins that nest in the old walls and the ruins, and cormorants and terns on the low cliffs. The island is a nature reserve run alongside the museum, and the conservation staff live on it.
The island’s other lives
Robben Island was a leper colony, a whaling station, a defence post and a lighthouse before it was an apartheid prison, and its name comes from the Dutch word for seals. It is now also a nature reserve, with a large colony of African penguins, seabirds and seals, and the museum runs the conservation alongside the history.
The crossing is worth something in itself. Coming back towards the city with Table Mountain rising over the bay gives you one of the great views of Cape Town, and it is the one you get by accident on the way home.
One island, several lives
Seventeenth century
A prison from the beginning
The island takes its name from the archaic Dutch word for seals, and it was fortified and used as a place of detention from the late seventeenth century. Being flat, small and six kilometres offshore made it a natural gaol long before anybody had a political use for it.
Nineteenth century
A leper colony, and a lighthouse
The island served as a leper colony and a place of isolation for the sick, and its graveyard is one of the stops on the tour. The lighthouse was built to guard the approach to Table Bay, which has always been a maritime hazard rather than a shelter.
Twentieth century
Apartheid’s prison
From the 1960s the island held political prisoners, among them Nelson Mandela, who spent eighteen of his twenty-seven years in prison there, breaking stone in the lime quarry. Two later presidents, Kgalema Motlanthe and Jacob Zuma, were also imprisoned on the island, which is not a coincidence in South African politics.
1996
The prison closes
Robben Island stopped being a prison in 1996, two years after the first democratic elections. The maximum security building, the quarry and the village remain, and the island was subsequently inscribed as a World Heritage Site for what it represents rather than for what it looks like.
Today
A museum, and a ferry
The island is run as a museum with tours departing three times a day from the Waterfront, and much of the guiding, including the prison section, is done by people who were held there. It is also a nature reserve, with penguins, seabirds and seals, and a crossing that gives you the view of Cape Town you will remember.
Practicalities
Book early and book direct. Take the earliest departure you can get, because the wind builds through the day and afternoon sailings are the ones that get cancelled. Wear something windproof even in summer, take water and sun protection, and accept that you will spend most of the three and a half hours standing, sitting on a bus or walking on rough ground.
If your trip is cancelled, the museum refunds or rebooks, and the sensible response is to take the next available slot rather than rearranging the rest of the holiday around it. And if you have time for only one historical site in Cape Town, this is the one to choose: it explains the country, the city and the politics in a way that no building on the mainland quite manages.
Before the Waterfront
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Robben Island is a ferry, a bus and a walk through a prison, and it is the most important three and a half hours in Cape Town. Book it the day you book your flights, keep the morning free for it, and leave the afternoon empty on purpose.
