Friday 8 April

Up early with Imogen and off to Robben Island on a quite smart boat. We watched a documentary which told the story and referred to some well-known and some half-forgotten names from the days of the fight against apartheid.

On the island itself the prison buildings and facilities were a horrible reminder of that dark era of South Africa’s history. Essentially, it was a concentration camp where many people died.

Most moving of all was the testimony of a survivor from incarceration and torture. He spoke continuously and clearly from his wheelchair (his leg had been amputated). I was welling up many times as, I suspect, were many others. A short tour and visits to cells provided all sorts of additional evidence of the atrocities committed during apartheid.

There was an abundance of barbed wire. There were towers which guards used for surveillance.

The cells were the real cells, not a sanitised reconstruction.

The quarry had been left as it was on the day the political prisoners were freed. It wasn’t difficult to imagine how hard and mercilessly those human-beings were treated. How little things have changed for the better around the world. It’s hard to optimistic.

It was very quiet on the boat on the trip back to the mainland.