Mandela's cell
Eighteen years.
South African Tourism from South Africa — CC BY 2.0 · Francesco Bandarin — CC BY-SA 3.0 igo · Krigore — CC BY-SA 4.0
A small island in Table Bay off Cape Town, used for centuries as a place of banishment and imprisonment, whose most famous prisoner was Nelson Mandela, who spent eighteen of his twenty-seven years in prison here. UNESCO listed it as a World Heritage Site in 1999 as a symbol of the triumph of the human spirit over injustice. Ferries leave from the Nelson Mandela Gateway at the V&A Waterfront, and the whole tour takes about three and a half hours. On the island a bus takes visitors to the lime quarry where prisoners laboured, the old leper colony and Robert Sobukwe's house. The most powerful part is the prison tour, led by a former political prisoner who describes life behind bars, ending at Mandela's narrow cell. The island also holds the shrine of a Muslim scholar exiled here in the eighteenth century, visited by the Cape's Muslims. The standard tour costs R600 per non-South African adult and R310 per child, with departures at 9 am, 11 am, 1 pm and 3 pm, per the Robben Island Museum. Ferries are cancelled in bad weather, so book early.
Eighteen years.
Leads the tour.
Prisoners' labour.
Table Bay, about 7 km offshore; ferries from the Nelson Mandela Gateway at the V&A Waterfront
The standard tour is R600 per non-South African adult and R310 per child, including the ferry, per the museum.