South Africa’s once notorious Robben Island penal colony risks ghost-town status as its last residents trickle off in search of creature comforts on the mainland.
The population of penguins, seals and feral cats far outnumbers the 112 human inhabitants of the present day heritage site — mostly former prison warders and their families now performing a variety of museum duties.
Thirty-eight residents left in the last year alone.
”It has changed quite a lot … for the worse. There is no life any more,” said former resident Karen Loyd.
”It’s turning into a very lonely place. People are moving out because of neglect. There were happy people, sport grounds, church every Sunday … not any more.”
A former prison staffer, Loyd left the island some three years ago after living there for nearly three decades.
Used as a place of banishment by various South African administrations since the early 1500s and later as a leper colony, Robben Island opened its doors to political prisoners in 1962 as the apartheid state intensified its clamp-down on opponents and critics in a bid to retain minority privilege.
Only black, Indian and coloured men were jailed on the island, including for 18 years Nelson Mandela, later to become South Africa’s first black president. The island was declared a World Heritage Site by the United Nations in 1999, five years after the official demise of the apartheid regime.
Since the jail was closed and turned into a popular museum, the island’s population has been declining as budget constraints and isolation force its residents to mainland Cape Town about 11km across the choppy, ice-cold waters of the Atlantic Ocean.
There is no church, library or police station, although a clinic, a crèche, and a primary school serve fewer than 20 children.
For shopping, high school attendance and employment on the mainland, many residents rely daily on a tourist ferry whose operation depends on the notoriously erratic weather.
Island Museum council chairperson Naledi Tsiki said the yearly government budget was not enough to make the island a more hospitable address.
”The budget we receive from government is for the museum and the development of the museum as a heritage site,” he said.
”But we end up stretching it for some things that we shouldn’t. We suggested that [government] departments like health and education should take over, but with no luck.”
The government of the Western Cape province and Cape Town, its capital, were shifting responsibility for services to the island onto each other, Tsiki added.
”I can’t see us providing services to the island. There is no way we can collect for example rubbish there [because] to go there is not easy,” said municipal spokesperson Charles Cooper.
”I think they are very much on their own … We have to look after our own people first.”
The image of the museum has been dented by a string of mishaps in recent months, including regular breakdowns of its daily tourist ferry to and from Cape Town.
Allegations of corruption to the tune of R25-million saw the suspension of two
senior executives last year.
A new council recently undertook a five-year, multimillion-rand revamp of the prison, including cell number 46664 where Mandela lived. And a R25-million, 300-seater boat named Sikhululekile (”We are free”) was launched this month to replace five ailing ferries dating from the apartheid era.
Finance Minister Trevor Manuel put aside more than R46-million for the Robben Island Museum in the current financial year, for ”conserving and promoting cultural heritage”.
No mention was made in the budget document, however, of improving daily living conditions for those still soldiering on.
”Living there is like being locked up. Locked out from the world, you don’t know what is going on outside. Like being in a prison, solitude,” said Loyd.
”I don’t think I will go back there, or wish for anyone to go live there. It’s like it’s another world. It’s a very lonely place, lonely for children to grow up there.” – AFP
