Aparteid History Day

Today we went to the District 6 Museum and Robben Island. District 6 was formerly a multi-cultural neighborhood in the heart of Cape Town. Blacks and whites lived side by side with Indians and Jews. The government first assigned the Blacks and Coloreds to go live in homelands and townships outside the city, then bulldozed over buildings. Obviously, this was a bad thing. The museum is dedicated to preserving the memories of how the neighborhood used to be, and contains hundreds of photographs from the 1950s and 1960s. Someone preserved all of the old street signs and the back room is full of family recipes embroidered on cloths. The entire floor was a laminated hand-drawn map of the neighborhood, and former residents have filled in their names where they used to live. Everyone took a bazillion pictures.

Then we took a ferry to Robben Island, the location of the prison in which Nelson Mandela was held as a political prisoner. The ocean was quite rough, and apparently there was a lot of sea sickness below deck. I stayed on top where it was blustery and wet and super cold, but the rushing air felt good and we all had a panorama view. Most sadly, a huge flock of birds flew dramatically in front of us right as the boat rocked over a particularly large swell, and when I took out my camera to capture the incredible bird formations, I lost my balance and totally ate it on the deck of the boat. The hand holding the camera smacked down, sticking the lens and effectively rendering it useless. Shame! Fortunately, I have camera insurance at home to get it replaced and can get photos from the other 64 people on this trip. But still totally sucky because I just bought it two weeks ago and spent a lot of time shopping, learning the shortcuts, and really liking it!

On Robben Island, we had a very dramatic tour guide for our bus trip around the island. The whole thing reminded me of Alcatraz and the book Al Capone Does My Shirts, which is about Alcatraz, on account of the extraneous prison community, like the guards' homes, the caretakers' houses, the school for the caretakers' children, etc. Mandela's cell was in fact tiny. A square room painted blue with a single window over a single bedroll. The two tour guides we had were very informative, one being an overdramatic storyteller and the other a former prisoner. Everyone took a bazillion pictures.

I can't really say that I was moved on this tour. I was a little distracted about my camera and knees were hurting and it was drizzling on and off and I was freezing. As the line of choir singers filed in front of his cell to take a picture, I kept thinking how bizarre it was that Mandela's jail cell has been turned into a shrine of sorts. The history foundations could have told us any of the thousands of square cells was the one that Mandela lived in, and we would have believed them. Is that cynical? I'm just not so moved by a room that has no personal markings whatsoever. Glad I went, maybe it will mean more for me later.