Day 23: Solemnity (then sushi!)

Our second unscheduled day dawned bright and warm…. and early! The Cape Town marathon is this weekend so we awoke to a fun run where thousands of people were running right past our apartment. It was certainly fun to watch them! Frank decided he had a hankering for eggs so he popped out to Woolworths (still makes me giggle!) for some provisions while I tried to finish up my keynote presentation – which is the reason we are here after all. After some egg rolls and coffee, it was time to head out into the warm sunshine toward the harbour.

We were headed for the V&A Waterfront – a massive retail complex where we would catch the ferry to Robben Island, the 5 square kilometer land mass off the coast where Nelson Mandela spent 18 years in prison. We walked along the coastline stopping in at the farmer’s market for some iced coffee before proceeding to the conglomeration of concrete and glass. Interestingly, the V&A here is not named for the Victoria and Albert, the queen and prince consort, but for Victoria and Alfred, the queen and her son who started construction on the waterfront during his mother’s reign. It is quite an impressive place with acre after acre of restaurants and malls. Yay, shopping…. grumble grumble… But there were cool rhinos! Aberdeen had bunnies but Cape Town apparently has rhinos.

We got our obligatory souveniers for the trip (and a lovely new tanzanite pendant for me) then enjoyed a glass of wine while we waited for our tour time. We then boarded a catamaran with 200 or so folks for the 30 minute trip to the island. During that time, they showed a video with the history of the island from the beginning of the colonial settlements through it’s use as a leper colony then WWII defensive post and on to the incarceration of political prisoners starting in 1961. Although the weather was glorious, the subject matter was sobering. It was interesting to hear people talk about “history” for many events that happened during my lifetime and for which I have some recollection of the news reports.

Once we disembarked, we were put onto buses to get a tour of at least part of the island. We passed one of the prisons used for criminals, the church built by lepers during their time on the island (the only building on the island owned by the church and not the state) and the leper grave yard. We had a short drive through the housing complex where the guards used to live and where the museum staff now stay. And we saw the house where Robert Sobokwe spent 4 years in basically solitary confinement amoungst the dog kennels for his part in what would become the Sharpesville Massacre.

Of course the centre piece of the trip is a tour of the maximum security prison that housed most of the political prisoners, inclunding Mandela. Our tour guide was Sparks Mlilwana, a former political prisoner who was arrested at for “terrorism” in his native Namibia and imprisoned on the island from 1983 – 1990. Listening to the stories of the treatment of the prisoners was sobering. He told of how the Indian and “coloured” prisoners got better rations than the black prisoners and were allowed socks and shoes. We saw the cell block where he spent his 7 years and he talked about how hard it was to start working here after everything he’d been through. If you can get here before they are all gone, do so. Hearing about things first hand is quite an experience.

Then to Mandela’s cell to see where he spent 18 years. Unlike Sparks who had a bunk in a room with 29 others, Mandela as a movement leader got his own 2 meter by 3 meter cell and spent 18 years there before being transferred to two other prisons during his 27 years behind bars. Don’t know what else can be said and I don’t know the blog post version of a moment of silence…

We were then herded back to the boat and went back to the mainland. And we were starving! We had a great breakfast but no lunch and the Coke Zero and bag of crisps purchased during our tour were no longer keeping the tummy rumbles at bay. So we were off in search of dinner and Frank’s choice tonight was sushi! Because nothing else goes with a day of apartheid history like raw fish! We found a lovely spot on the deck of a restaurant at the waterfront and went all seafood. Oysters to start then a huge platter of tuna and salmon sushi with a lovely bottle of Chenin Blanc. No GF soy sauce so I had to eat my sushi naked but it was still delish. Because we weren’t weighed down by wads of red meat like last night, we had room for dessert as well: cheesecake and an Eton mess. YUM! Because we had an early dinner, we were treated to an amazing sunset sky for the walk home. All in all, a both sobering and satisfying day.