Wrecked fishing boat on Robben Island, Cape Town in background, South Africa

Taken from my archives and posted today in memory of Nelson Mandela, the remarkable South African who died yesterday at the age of 95.

I first visited South Africa in 1984 when it was still under the apartheid regime, and Nelson Mandela was imprisoned on Robben Island off the south coast of Cape Town. I visited again in 2000 after the Truth and Reconciliation hearings and made a trip to Robben Island to see the prison there and the cell where Mandela had been imprisoned for much of his 27 years in prison. I took this picture on the beach of Robben Island and I like to think that Madiba may have stood on this very spot by the old wrecked boat and enjoyed this view of Cape Town.

In the winter of 1964, Nelson Mandela arrived on Robben Island where he would spend 18 of his 27 prison years. Confined to a small cell, the floor his bed, a bucket for a toilet, he was forced to do hard labor in a quarry. He was allowed one visitor every 6 months for 30 minutes. He could write and receive one letter of 500 words every six months. But Robben Island became the crucible which transformed him. Through his intelligence, charm and dignified defiance, Mandela eventually bent even the most brutal prison officials to his will, assumed leadership over his jailed comrades and became the master of his own prison. He emerged from it the mature leader who would fight and win the great political battles that would create a new democratic South Africa. Mandela was released from Robben Island in 1990 and four years later the prisoner became the President. Adapted from http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/mandela/prison/

A panorama of Cape Town taken from the boat to Robben Island can be seen here: http://goo.gl/KLboKD

06/11/13 http://www.allenfotowild.com

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