Welcome to Jail

1/19 

*yawn* Busy day, early morning, no sleep= a very tired Anna.

We started the day at District 6 museum. District 6 was an area of Cape town where black, colored, Islamic, Jewish and other non-“white” families live.  During the 1966 it was declared a white area under the Group Areas act of 1950. This was an act that grouped people together based on their skin color, religion etc. It is responsible for ripping people apart during the apartied. By 1982 60,000 people had been forcibly removed from their homes.  At the museum we met Noor Abrahamson. Noor’s family had five generations living in a house in District 6 when they were forcibly removed and their house bulldozed. He told us what it was like to see families torn from their homes, ripped apart (if they were different races) and left with nothing. It was quite haunting.  Noor told us a story of how a family had been given notice that the next day they were required to leave their home.  As they were eating breakfast the next day a bull dozer started tearing apart their house.

Noor also described to us the recontribution that the government gave to these people. In Noor’s family’s case their house was worth, at the time, 32,000 Rand, now it would be worth about 2 million Rand.  Noor was given simply 1500R, and he said he was one of the lucky ones.  Now the government is offering free land for previous residents. While this is great, it is not without its own price;  the people must fund the building of the house themselves, and the waiting list to get land is immense and very slow moving. Noor said that he is on the list and it might be 10-15 years before he ever sees any land again. Of course the land being given won’t be a guarantee of the same land as the land they once owned. In Noors case part of The University of Cape Town was built over his house. 

Our next stop was The Slave Lodge. Here we were greeted by the vibrant Lucy Campbell. She showed us around the second oldest building in Cape Town; the slave lodge. This immense building has a terrible history of human oppression.  I think the most important thing that we all took away from this tour was that not many people nowadays know about the slaves that build the city, and certainly they don’t know about the horrifying conditions that these slaves were kept in. The slave lodge is located in the middle of downtown Cape Town. Yet many people walk past without a clue of the buildings dark history. Lucy Campbell made it very clear that we cannot forget history no matter how dark it might be. We must acknowledge it to learn from past mistakes.

Lunch was on our own again. Alyssa and I took the advice of a parking attendant and went to Mr. Pickwicks House of Food.  There we had massive milkshakes and toasties (mine had smoked salmon and cream cheese on it. Mmmhmmm).  Cape Town definitely knows how to do good food.

After lunch it was on to Robben Island!  It was just a quick 30 minute boat ride across the harbor.  Once there we hopped on a bus and were introduced to the history of the island and all of the different structures on it. We then met our guide for the walking tour; a former prisoner. Though I can’t recall his name, I can tell you he was a political prisoner during the liberation struggle. He had been arrested during the Soweto protest (this was the protest that killed 4,000 school children).  After showing us around the relatively small prison we got to see Nelson Mandela’s cell.  It was tiny. Furnished with a blanket, night stand, and a couple books it was hard to imagine anyone spending years locked in such a small room, much less such an icon as Mandela. 

Robben Island Prison

Nelson Mandela's cell

Table mountain with Cape Town nestled at the bottom