"Long Walk to Freedom"

"Without language, one cannot talk to people and understand them; one cannot share their hopes and aspirations, grasp their history, appreciate their poetry, or savor their songs. I again realized that we were not different people with separate languages; we were one people, with different tongues."
                   ~Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom

Taking the ferry to Robben Island made me wonder what it would be like to live on a beautiful island, but know that life in such a beautiful place is forever tainted and restricted by strict rules and harsh authorities. Nelson Mandela lived on Robben Island for 30 years and continued to fight for his rights, rights of the prisoners, and rights of the people while being treated poorly behind bars. For one of our house events paid for by CIEE, we toured Robben Island and learned more about Nelson Mandela and prison life on the island. I've been reading Mandela's autobiography Long Walk to Freedom and although I'm not quite finished with the 625-page book, I made sure to read far enough before visiting Robben Island so I had a grasp of what prison life on the island was like in Mandela's words...

"There was a knock on the door and I could see Colonel Aucamp's face at the bars. "Mandela," he said in a husky whisper, "are you awake?" I told him I was. "You are a lucky man," he said. "We are taking you to a place where you will have your freedom. You will be able to move around; you'll see the ocean and the sky, not just gray walls." He intended no sarcasm, but I well knew that the place he was referring to would not afford me the freedom I longed for." (page 381)

"I was assigned a cell at the head of the corridor. It overlooked the courtyard and had a small eye-level window. I could walk the length of my cell in three paces. When I lay down, I could  feel the wall with my feet and my head grazed the concrete at the other side. The width was about six feet, and the walls were at least two feet thick. Each cell had a white card posted outside of it with our name and our prison service number. Mine read, "N Mandela 466/64," which meant I was the 466th prisoner admitted to the island in 1964. I was forty-six years old, a political prisoner with a life sentence and that small cramped space was to be my home for I knew not how long." (page 384)

"Mining lime is not a simple task. That first day, we were clumsy with our new tools and extracted little. The lime itself, which is the soft, calcified residue of seashells and coral, is burried in layers of rock, and one had to break through to it with a pick, and then extract the seam of lime with a shovel. This was far more strenuous than the work in the courtyard, and after our first few days on the quarry we fell asleep immediately after our supper at 4:30 in the afternoon. We woke the next morning still aching and still tired." (page 404) 

"Prison and the authorities conspire to rob each man of his dignity. In and of itself, that assured that I would survive, for any man or institution that tries to rob me of my dignity will lose because I will not part with it at any price or under any pressure. I never seriously considered the possibility that I would not emerge from prison one day. I never thought that a life sentence truly meant life and that I would die behind bars. Perhaps I was denying this prospect because it was too unpleasant to contemplate. But I always knew that someday I would once again feel the grass under my feet and walk in the sunshine of a free man." (page 391) 

Mandela secretly wrote his autobiography while on Robben Island, and while writing, he stashed the pages in the back corner of the courtyard prison (pictured above). When one of his friends was released from Robben Island, he smuggled in his belongings the pages of Mandela's manuscript, which was later published as Long Walk to Freedom in 1994, four years after Mandela walked as a free man and apartheid ended in South Africa.