Various aspects of our Cape Town experiences have introduced us to forms of slavery and imprisonment in South Africa over the last six centuries. Exposure to the history of slavery and imprisonment has contributed to our understanding of race and apartheid. The history of slave trade in Africa relates to all we have learned about slavery in the United States and the development of the US in to the nation it is today. Additionally, studying these topics through personal interactions has enhanced our individual understanding of the realities of imprisonment and today’s race relations in South Africa.
Our journey to Robben Island was eye-opening and highly informative. It was first used as a place of banishment during the 16th century; it has been used since then to detain criminals and undesirables. Our tour with Lionel Davis, a political prisoner for seven years during apartheid, exposed us to the reality of the harsh and unfair treatment that blacks and coloured people received on Robben Island during apartheid. In many ways, the prisoners were denied basic human rights because of their race and supposed crimes against the white government. Many were kept in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day, and they were only allowed to have visitors once every six months. Letters were highly censored. The prisoners were only allowed to read up to 500 words, and the guards would often refuse to pass along letters all together. As punishment, the prisoners would be denied meals, lose visitation privileges, or even be buried in sand up to their heads so the guards could urinate on their faces. Lionel’s experiences were disturbing and alarming, but they ultimately enabled us to begin to understand the hatred that nonwhites endured during apartheid. His first-hand stories provided me, and potentially others, with the closest encounter I have ever had to the realities of racism and discrimination at their cruelest.
Our guided tour of the Slave Lodge Museum was also a unique encounter with racism and slavery. We immediately recognized the passion of our guide Lucy as she began to explain the importance of the slave lodge in the history of the African slave trade. She also did not hesitate in telling us that she is racist, which many of my classmates respected because of her honesty with us. Many students have commented that race is a more open topic for discussion in South Africa than in the United States, which was certainly exhibited in this situation. Lucy shared with us that the lodge was used to house slaves before they were transported to other regions of the world. I was surprised that many of the people who were captured and sold in to slavery were caught by their own people and sold for money, rather than just captured by Europeans and Americans. This experience was enlightening and made the history of the slave trade more real to me. I was able to see its affects through Lucy’s stories and personal background, looking at the artifacts and graphs in the museum, and physically standing in places where former slaves were held captive before they were forever separated from their families and home.
As with many other experiences we’ve had in South Africa thus far, Robben Island and the Slave Lodge Museum offered new perspectives on race relations throughout South Africa history and the effects of racism and discrimination. Though we have intensely studied in various contexts throughout our education the impacts of slavery and racism, learning from people who were directly affected by it and are passionate about the role of human rights in society has made these issues come alive.
S. Kowalkowski
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