Robben Island

Robben Island Map

Situated a short distance off the Atlantic coast of Cape Town, well within sight of the city, Robben Island is famous as the site of the imprisonment of former South African President Nelson Mandela.

Robben Island was used as a prison island between the 17th century and the last years of the 20th century. Buildings on the island date from the earliest days of Dutch colonisation, and the island housed lepers and the mentally ill when the British controlled the Cape. It was used as a military base during World War II and finally as a prison for undesirables of apartheid South Africa.

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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