Robben Island
Table Bay
robben-island.org.za
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Official Site (robben-island.org.za)Robben Island (places.co.za)
South Africa Online Travel Guide (southafrica-travel.net)
Robben Island (freedom.co.za)
Situated 12km off the coast of Cape Town, Robben Island has attained an almost mythical status not only in South Africa itself, but all over the world. It is renowned as the place where Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in captivity for defying apartheid, and will thus be forever linked with the struggles of non-white South Africans against one of history’s most abhorrent political systems.
Robben (Dutch for “seal”) Island was a place of imprisonment for nearly 400 years – and for nearly 100 of them a leper colony – but these days it is a memorial and a museum, and in 1999 was named by UNESCO as a world heritage site. But its aura is so compelling that visitors cannot stay away. Tours leave every day from Cape Town’s V&A Waterfront and last four hours, including two half-hour catamaran trips. The brutality of prison life on the island feels like another world now, but for a taste of political injustice and a glimpse of South African history, Robben Island remains one of the country’s most awe-inspiring, thought-provoking phenomena.
Robben (Dutch for “seal”) Island was a place of imprisonment for nearly 400 years – and for nearly 100 of them a leper colony – but these days it is a memorial and a museum, and in 1999 was named by UNESCO as a world heritage site. But its aura is so compelling that visitors cannot stay away. Tours leave every day from Cape Town’s V&A Waterfront and last four hours, including two half-hour catamaran trips. The brutality of prison life on the island feels like another world now, but for a taste of political injustice and a glimpse of South African history, Robben Island remains one of the country’s most awe-inspiring, thought-provoking phenomena.
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An awsome place to visit and contemplate a great man, I would advise anyone to go.
davidg0453, Washington UK 15/5/2007
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