The
Oprah South African Leadership Project provides cross-cultural
immersion and international exposure through travel
and study in South Africa for Morehouse College students.
In the future, it will involve an exchange of students
between Morehouse and South Africa, and will encompass
ethical leadership training and community service
in both Atlanta and South Africa.
May
31, 2005
 The
Cape Town Nelson Mandela saw when he stepped onto
the boat that would take him to the craggy shores
of Robben Island is a far different place than the
tourist haven it has now become.
No
lounging sea lions piled on top of each other next
to glistening private boats. The zydeco music played
by a jazz combo belongs more to the old cobbled alleys
of New Orleans than the newer ones of Cape Town. No
mall. No Waterfront shopping, dining or waterholes.
No speed bumps that slow the fast moving cars that
make their way through the Cape. And definitely absent
is the elaborate entrance to the Robben Island ferry
gate named after South Africa’s first president,
Nelson Mandela.
At
the Nelson Mandela Gateway to Robben Island, as it
is officially called, the Morehouse College and Butler
students mill about taking in the view of Table Mountain
directly across the highway and stroll through an
exhibit that covers Robben Island’s changing
history.
 In
1658, Autshumato, a tribal leader, was imprisoned
and escaped after three years of confinement. During
the 19th century, the prison was used for anyone who
broke the law: prostitutes and thieves, deserters
and political prisoners. In the late 1800s, Robben
Island doubled as both a jailhouse and a leper colony.
During World War II, it became a military base. By
the time Mandela arrived in 1963, Robben Island was
a maximum-security prison, housing both political
prisoners and common-law criminals in separate areas
of the prison.
The
guides that walk visitors through the prison are former
prisoners themselves. Our guide, Benjamin Tau, a former
Robben Island political prisoner convicted of high
treason in1980 at the age of 34 and released in 1991,
told the group that most prisoners were sentenced
in Pretoria—the political capital of the country—and
shackled together. Only chains, bread with jelly,
and a “baggy” for excrement accompanied
them on the long non-stop journey from Pretoria, in
South Africa’s northeast, to Cape Town, located
on the southwestern tip of the country.
The 30-minute ferry ride leaves the Waterfront for
the desolate expanse of the Atlantic Ocean. After
leaving the boat, visitors walk under a sign that
reads, “Welcome to Robben Island—We Serve
with Pride.” It is the same sign many prisoners
stared at as they entered the prison.
“We
serve the Afrikaans government with pride by locking
away all those black people who fought against the
institution of apartheid,” harrumphed Rheba
Knox, assistant director of Training for the Leadership
Center. “That would be thoroughly disgusting,
but keeping with the philosophy of the government
during the reign of apartheid.”
 As
the group walks through Section B, the area where
political prisoners were held, Tau tells stories about
prison life.
There
is the courtyard-slash-recreation area where prisoners
played tennis and other games. Surrounding the now
cracked concrete with fading white lines, visitors
can still touch and smell the flourishing blooms and
greenery that Mandela planted years ago.
Turn
toward the jailhouse and Mandela’s cell—the
fourth one on the right—is arranged much the
same way when he was a prisoner on the island. There
were no beds or mattresses, so prisoners slept on
a thin pallet on the floor. Walk further down the
hall and make two lefts and you’ve reached the
toilet, buzzing with flies and still carrying a slight
scent in the air.
Other
parts of the tour compel visitors to explore the rest
of the cellblock, each one bearing an anecdote and
a memento from the prisoner who lived there. Chess
pieces drawn on paper and a bag for luggage used to
hold communal goods are just some of the many items
that tell the prisoner’s stories.
 When
Tau is asked why he works in the same place where
he was forced into labor, the same place that took
away 11 years of his life, the same place where he
began to correspond with the woman he married after
being released from prison and is still married to
today, he answers, “Somebody must do it. I enjoy
talking to everyone and you cannot change the past.”
For
Nashid Sharrief ’06, a business administration
major from Detroit, Mich., the Robben Island tour
told a cycle all too true when men and women enter
prison and leave after serving their sentence. Unlike
the many of the political prisoners who left Robben
Island to rebuild South Africa’s government
or start community projects, the men in America’s
prisons seem to return to a life of crime.
“The
quotes I read in each cell, reminded me of the physical
and mental affects that prison has on men everywhere,“
says Sharrief. “In particular, was a quote from
a prisoner, who said, ‘Even though they physically
trap me and turn me into a criminal, I will not let
them imprison my mentality.’”
“And
it is serious,” he said, “because in American
prisons people go in being labeled criminals, but
when they come out the prison has affected them in
such a way that they behave as criminals because that’s
what’s expected of them.”
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