People persevere through hardships utilizing various outlets of expression. While in Cape Town we have been fortunate enough to hear from many survivors of prisons during apartheid and many of them have referenced the use of the written language to pull them through the immense and unimaginable plight through apartheid.
The written language has ancient roots and it revolutionized the way cultures communicated with each other. As we saw in the South African national museum, the first tribes of South Africa used their unique cave paintings as an integral communication too in their society. As time progressed, people used the written language for many other reasons such as expression, informative media, education and more.
The first we heard of the written language as an aid to prisoners during apartheid was on our tour of Robben Island. We were so fortunate to have the oppertunity to explore the island that holds such rich history with a man who experienced first hand the horrible circumstances. I was overwhelmed by the gravity of the grounds we were standing on and tried picturing what the prison wen like without all of the tourists, busses and cardboard signs- and tried picturing it with actual prisoners.
Something that stuck out to me that our tour guide said was that while in their cells. prisoners would devise plans to sneak newspaper into the cells so they could stay informed on what was happening in the outside world. As a communications major, part of me is always observing the different media outlets in different societies. For the inmates, the pages of newspaper they were able to sneak behind bars were perhaps their only tangible connection to the world outside of the island. Looking back. I wondered if the newspapers provided excitement for the prisoners and if it gave them something to look forward to.
In order to explore this concept of newspapers in prison I did some research and was surprised with the amount of information available. According to Nelson Mandela, “newspapers were more valuable to political prisoners than gold or diamonds, more hungered for them more than food or tobacco.” During their stay, prison guards tried to ensure that prisoners had no newspapers in fear that the content could cause an influx of morale or incite an uprising. However, if prisoners applied to take school courses they could order publicatios necessary for their studies. The prison authorities also authorized the reading of “The UNESCO Coruer,” a magazine from France which was seen as harmless.
(http://www.unesco.org/new/en/unesco-courier/single-view/news/nelson_mandel#.VLmFRYFXeK0)
As Alex said in her blog post, the government strictly regulated and censored media during the apartheid and these regulations were even more extreme on Robben Islamd. It was through magazines like The Coruer that helped the political prisoners remain intellectually viable and was a crucial factor in their survival on Robben Island
Something else I found interesting was that political prisoners were so desperate for the intellectual stimulation that newspapers would provide that they rewarded each other for stealing papers from warden’s homes, according to Charlene Smith’s book, Robben Island. However, according to the book, most times prisoners would have to steal newspaper sections from garbage piles and risk getting shot bringing them back to their cells. It’s awful that political figures with such sharp minds were denied access to basic news information and had to risk their lives in order to get any reading material they could. Their drive to continue to educate themselves shows their immense ability to persevere and perhaps their hope that they would one day be freed from the bars of apartheid.
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