Robben Island: The house of pain



A painting depicting the first man to be imprisoned at

Robben Island, Autshomato

Lebohang Pita
@LeboPita

A great inhabitant for sea mammals like penguins and seals, Robben Island is the original African colony for penguins.

The Island was a peaceful place until it was seized by Dutch settlers in the mid-1600s. In the late 17^th century, Jan Van Riebeeck and his men used Robben Island for the isolation of people who resisted Dutch authority in the Cape of Good Hope and the East Indies in Asia.

The first prisoners to be dropped on the Island were slaves who were regarded as failures by the Portuguese in 1625. But Autshomato, an interpreter for Europeans, was the first man to be imprisoned on Robben Island for political reasons after protesting against the Dutch’s unfair treatment of Sans in the Cape in 1658.

There is a Gramat or holy shrine on the Island-a sacred place for Muslims- which is believed to have been built on top of the graves of Islam pioneers in South Africa, Haji Matarin and Abdurahman Moturu. Matarin and Moturu were religious leaders from Indonesia who were sent to the Island for protesting against Dutch rule in the East Indies.

The Island was continued to be used to muzzle anti-apartheid politicians such as Robert Sobukwe and Nelson Mandela by apartheid authorities. Many prisoners spent years of hardship on the Island for resisting an authority that deprived them of their basic human rights.



The leper grave yard at the Robben Island Museum.

People with leprosy were kept on the Island in the 1800s.



The Island did not only serve as a prison but was also used for the isolation of people with leprosy. In the 1800s it was still believed that leprosy was incurable and contagious. Authorities wanted to remove these people from the mainland by forcing them to live in isolation on the Island. Their aim was to let them live and die on the Island.

Lepers lived on Robben Island from 1856 until 1931.

A safement where you could feed on the birds, penguins and seals used to cause people pain. It is believed that for 300 hundred years penguins were extinct on the Island but were reinstated in 1998. The penguins were extinct on the Island because political prisoners hunted them and finished the last species of these sea mammals.

Robben Island was a safe haven until it was misused by cruel and greedy people. The Island deprived Africans of their right to freedom while the natural species of the Island were chased away from their natural inhabitant.