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Robben Island digitisation: Let your fingers do the walking

Always wanted to visit Robben Island, but can’t afford the trip or live too far away? Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, you can now experience the island from any internet-connected computer. A new collaboration between Google and the Robben Island Museum has seen the island mapped via Street View, so you can choose between exploring it on your own or taking an interactive tour with a former political prisoner. By REBECCA DAVIS.

Click on the Google Street View of Robben Island, and you’re deposited exactly where real-life visitors disembark the ferries from Cape Town mainland. Ahead of you looms the entrance to the island: “Robbeneiland”, reads the sign. “We serve with pride/Ons dien met trots”.

A few clicks forward on the arrow and you’re making your way down one of the island’s small roads. A passer-by is visible: a reminder that the island continues to support a permanent population of around 200. They keep voting for the Democratic Alliance come election-time, which must be a source of frustration for the ANC. There’s a small shop which keeps them stocked with groceries, as well as a clinic. One can even be pulled over for speeding on the island. Bills for municipal services run to millions every year.

Robert Sobukwe House

Photo: Robert Sobukwe house

Continue to click forward, and you’re faced with a choice. There’s a junction here, where an old cannon serves as a reminder that one of Robben Island’s historical incarnations was as a World War II base, after its stint as a leper colony but before it became the penitentiary that would imprison South Africa’s most high-profile freedom fighters.

Take a sneaky shortcut across the grass, if you like. When you hit buildings, you’ll find – like a video game – that you can enter some doors, but not others. There’s more than enough to explore: the tiny cell where Nelson Mandela spent 18 of his 27 years in prison; the limestone quarry in which the inmates toiled daily; the house where Pan-Africanist Congress founder Robert Sobukwe lived a strange existence in solitary confinement.

On Wednesday, journalists visiting Robben Island in person had Mandela’s longtime friend and fellow Rivonia Triallist Ahmed Kathrada as tour guide, irrepressible as ever even at 85.

“This is the man that tortured us!” he said, grabbing former prison warder Christo Brand around the shoulders, beaming. Later, he repeated a joke by Muslim comic Riaad Moosa: that Kathrada had spent less time in jail than Mandela because “Kathrada, being an Indian, asked for a discount”.

Quarry

Photo: Quarry

Kathrada has a uniquely intimate relationship with Robben Island. Even after being freed, he had a house on the island due to his duties on the island council. Kathrada joked on Wednesday that he would like to have his Robben Island house back, because he is required to return to the island frequently and could use it as a resting spot.

The likes of Kathrada won’t be around forever, which is one of the motivations behind the Google project of digitisation. At the moment, former political prisoners guide tour groups around Robben Island. When the last of their generation is no longer with us, Robben Island CEO Sibongiseni Mkhize said, the island will have to turn to the kind of listening devices common to museums worldwide. Technology can help preserve their memories now.

Asked what part of the Robben Island experience he thought it most important to commemorate, Kathrada replied: “We don’t want to exaggerate the experiences of the political prisoners [on the island]. It was difficult, but it was not the main part of the Struggle… Our comrades outside were on the coalface of the Struggle. Those are the people we must think of.”

The digitisation project undertaken by the Google Cultural Institute includes extensive video interviews with other ex-political prisoners, including former deputy president Kgalema Motlanthe and businessman Tokyo Sexwale. The digital tour you can undertake of the prison is guided by former prisoner Vusumsi Mcongo, who still works on the island. On display online are also photographs of Robben Island artefacts ranging from Sexwale’s football trophy to Robert Sobukwe’s diary, with a zoom function allowing you to read Sobukwe’s handwriting quite clearly.

“We see [Robben Island] as a place of pilgrimage, not just for South Africans but for humanity,” acting deputy director general of tourism Victor Tharage explained. “This is a really big boost for our marketing efforts.”

Trekker1

Photo: Google Maps’ tracker

There’s one problem with Google’s impressive project: the online experience of Robben Island may in some respects be better than the real thing. Online, you can take your time; offline, visitors tend to be herded through Robben Island at quite a pace in order to meet ferry schedules and accommodate demand. The maintenance of ferries in good working order has been a constant headache for the Robben Island Museum, and it is the availability of ferries that currently dictates the length of visitors’ stays on the island.

Is there any concern that the online mapping of the island may actually reduce footfall to it? Quite the opposite, officials say.

“It is that virtual tour that will bring you to a realisation that you have to complete the actual tour, ultimately,” Tharage suggested.

Mkhize agreed: “People want to see before they make a commitment,” he said.

One person who is unlikely to benefit from the project is Kathrada, who ruefully admitted: “The technological revolution passed us by when we were on the island.”

Kathrada told the story of how a Robben Island prison warder came to the Rivonia Triallists and informed them that he had just received a fax from Pretoria instructing that the prisoners to be released. Instead of responding with jubilation, Kathrada and his comrades reacted with confusion: “What’s a fax?” they asked.

“I still can’t use an ATM,” Kathrada said. DM

Main photo: Mandela’s cell

Read more:

  • Google Maps and Robben Island Museum combine history with technology, on Traveller24

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