Respectful Rememberance: Robbeneiland

Some of you might have been there, most of you have heard of it: Robbeneiland. The prison in which anti-apartheid/politician Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela spent 18 years of his life. The prison still exists and has become a place that people can visit. But how can something that has so much heavy & dramatic history to it be promoted in a respectful way?

A couple of weeks ago I left for South Africa, a beautiful country, great food, friendly people and a lot of interesting historical features. The country is still recovering from the past, but the people are looking forward to the future. One of the things that you have to see when you go to South Africa, is definitly the Robbeneiland on which the former high-safety prison stands. So we left early one morning as the island is known to be rather popular and for that reason — busy.

After a long wait in the queue for the cross-over from main-land to the island, we finally got on the ferry. As always I got very sea-sick (one has to give up something in order to gain something right?). Once we got to the island the first thing I saw was a huge text, written on one of the prison buildings:

FREEDOM CANNOT BE MANACLED

A thing that is sometimes forgotten by most of us. We got out of the boat and together with about 150 other people we were divided over several busses, and we were then toured over the landscape, showing the village, graveyard, school and even some random pinguens that lived on the island.

We then were ‘handed over’ to a former prisoner who would take us around the prison. We were shown were all the inmates slept, how they were treated, what they ate and what they would do in the prison.

And finally we were told to queue up and allowed to take pictures of the cel in which Nelson Mandela spent those 18 years. The guide ended the tour with saying that he and most other inmates had forgiven those who captured them, some had even become friends. It sounded weird yet very moving that they FORGAVE even though awful things had been done to them.

The journey back to the mainland passed in silence. (and obviously seasick again…)

If we look at how tourist attractions like this are promoted, it is a difficult balance that has to be achieved. On one hand you want the place to be respected, to be a place where people can remember horrible things of the past. On the other hand you want a lot of people to come. Because, let’s be honest, these places are attractions that generate a lot of money for the native people.

A lot of people know about Auschwitz, the Anne Frank House and Robbeneiland. So not a lot of promotion goes to raising awareness about it. However they are all examples of the top 3 things to see when visiting Poland, the Netherlands or South Africa.

So the promoting mostly goes into the actual experience of one of those attractions themselves. If we look at the Robbeneiland prison, it was chosen to show the tourists around the island in a bus. One reason for this is for maintenance. If a lot of people walked around the island all by themselves and all over the place, theft and damage could be a consequence. Also the fact that with busses they can show people around more quickly and more efficiently. One guide with microphone is enough for one bus. Another reason is that sitting in a bus creates distance between you and the things outside. This, in turn, creates a bit of respect, because you get a good view of the situation.

However, the fact that so many people visit an attraction like this, tends to make it a little less impressive. If you have to queue up or see a lot of people constantly taking pictures of everything it makes the experience less personal. However at Robbeneiland once we were to go inside of the prison they made sure that you would go in one group at a time. So you could feel the silence, the cold and the actual feeling of being inside of the prison. The fact that someone who actually had spent time in the prison led us around the prison also enforced the feeling of how things really worked back then which created a respectful and emotional experience.

I think that places like Robbeneiland and Auschwitz are still very impressive and emotionally charged places. I think that is very difficult for the PR of these places to find a balance between allowing people to pay their respects and making a living from it. For me, and I think many more people felt the same in my tour group, I wanted to stay and look at Mandela’s cel longer then just those 10 seconds to comprehend what happened and what it meant.

But even so, the experience really touched me and hopefully others in the future.