ROBBEN ISLAND, South Africa - It is hard to imagine a more idyllic setting in which the sadistic horrors of South Africa's apartheid played out than Robben Island.
Just a few kilometres across the frigid Atlantic from the modern bustle of Cape Town and the panoramic sweep of Table Mountain and Lion's Head, it is a place still haunted by the ghosts of its recent past.
Once, its very name evoked desolation and dread a place where those who dared take on the power of the white minority state were banished.
Among the many political victims who laboured in its quarry hacking at white rock under the eye-damaging sun was Nelson Mandela. This was his home for 18 of his 27 years behind bars. His cell, with its simple bed, is now open to visitors who are led around by another former prisoner.
Today, Robben Island its name comes from the Dutch for Seal Island is a place to contemplate both the evil of state-sanctioned oppression and the indomitable spirit of those the jack-boots could not crush despite the regime's best efforts.
Hundreds of tourists now traipse quietly through the notorious cellblocks in which absolute power was wielded with absolute indifference.
Even here, the far-reaching pettiness of segregation was evident. No shoes or underwear and a subsistence diet for black prisoners made to wear short pants. "Coloured" inmates fared slightly better with their diets and long pants, the guide explains. White inmates were kept elsewhere.
One letter strictly censored, sometimes forged or altered by guards allowed every month or three. Tales of torture, both mental and physical.
The one-time leper colony turned gulag so achingly close to the mainland, yet so impossibly far away now functions as a museum and world heritage site against a backdrop that takes the breath away.
The small boats that ferried prisoners and later visitors to and from the island have been replaced by a large modern ferry that carries a few hundred people at a time from the glittering, modern waterfront development at the foot of Cape Town on the 30-minute ocean ride.
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Robben Island: Triumph of spirit over tyranny against breath-taking backdrop
