Robben Island - Cape Town, South Africa

Situated 11km off the coast of Cape Town, well within sight of the city, Robben Island is famous as Nelson Mandela's home for 18 of his 27 years of incarceration under successive apartheid governments.

Robben Island was used as a prison island between the 17th century and the last years of the 20th century, the place where the city housed its unloved, unwanted and undesirables, from lepers to common criminals and political prisoners.

Tours to Robben Island leave from the Nelson Mandela Gateway at the Clock Tower section of the V&A Waterfront (booking is essential). A pleasant 40 minute cruise across Table Bay (you may see penguins and seals) will land you on the island where a former political prisoner-turned guide will give you an insight into what life was once like here.

Robben Island is now part of the new, democratic South Africa, and its status as a World Heritage Site reflects the transformation that the island represents. To quote Nelson Mandela:

"Robben Island is a vital part of South Africa's collective heritage. How do we reflect the fact that the people of South Africa as a whole, together with the international community, turned one of the world's most notorious symbols of the resistance of oppression into a world-wide icon of the universality of human rights, of hope, peace, and reconciliation?"

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