It was a perfect day to visit there. Blue sky and dazzling sunshine. I was enjoying beautiful lands scape on the deck of ferry to a small island. But if I were in 1964? If so, these beautiful blue sky and sea could make me sad and anxious. Because my ferry was heading over to Robben Island, where a lot of prisoners had been jailed before.
At the end of March 2009, I visited South Africa. Because I respect Nelson Mandela, I was interested in South Africa in that the people conquered apartheid. Apartheid was a strange social system made by Europeans in South Africa. Under the apartheid regime, nonwhites were stripped of their power and dignity by treating as aliens in their own land. For challenging the cruel system Mandela was sentenced to prison for life and sent to Robben Island in 1964.
Today Robben Island is used as a museum and our tourists can visit a former censorship room, a prison yard and prison cells listening t a guide's explanation. Nelson Mandela's prison cell was very small and mean.
In a decisive trial of 1963, Mandela told the court like this. "I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons will live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and see realized. But if it need be, my lord, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die."
This statement is based on an universal common sense. His idea of equality is admirable. Because of his believing in such ideal, however, Mandela received life sentence and was deprived of his freedom. How absurd!
Nevertheless, Mandela and other political prisoners didn't always accept passively their miserable situation. Even in prison Mandela had been struggling for freedom by making all kinds of efforts. Mandela and his fellows constantly discussed each other in prison. As they laboured during the day, they whispered by their native language. At night they scribbled down their thoughts, put it in matchboxes and passed them around to communicate each other. Their team play was perfect. After Mandela secretly wrote his autobiography at night, his fellows copied the text and hid the manuscript. They were very clever. They invented magic ink and papers and make the most use of anything to fight. They formed a strong network and changed their information into a great wisdom in their oppressed environment.
In the museum our tourist was a big black man. He was a former political prisoner there. I asked him "Sometimes do you feel anger towards the previous cruel system where you were forced to live?" He answered without any hesitation. "No. I never feel such anger." Regardless of his great torment of prison life he promptly answered this. Great Forgiveness and Reconciliation! He shared spiritual greatness with his leader, Nelson Mandela.
For Mandela and his fellows, Robben Island was actually a prison, but at the same time it was also their university, where they studied, cooperate each other and created an unstable human bond based on life-long trust. It is their own strong WILL that transformed the miserable prison into great university, which made multiracial democracy realized in South Africa. We must consider the meaning of THIS again and again.
(the original speech was given on 16 April 2009)
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