SOUTH AFRICA'S ROBBEN ISLAND HAS LONG AND SOBERING HISTORY OF POSTS AND PRISONS

            Robben Island, a windswept outcrop off the tip of South Africa, has a history of providing postal services long before it became notorious as a prison. The apartheid-era penal island where Nelson Mandela and a host of others were imprisoned still has a postal role to play even though,
thankfully, the former prison now exists just as a memorial.
            According to Peggy Mosupa, writing in South Africa Post’s excellent Setempe philatelic magazine, Robben Island became important in international postal communications not that long after it was “discovered” by Europeans in 1488.
            About 12 kilometres off Cape Town at the tip of South Africa, for Portuguese sailors the island became a place (as well as a place they could hunt seals and penguins for provisions) where letters could be dropped off, Mosupa explains: “The Europeans used the island as an informal mail
point, leaving letters and reports under specially marked ‘post office stones’ for allied ships that called.”
            By 1611 the island was being used as a mail station. Records confirm that John Saris, captain of Britain’s 1613 first voyage to Japan, was retrieving post from a rock on the island, as were many other voyagers.
            A few decades later the British placed a group of Khoikhoi tribal people on the island as mail workers, complementing the tents for trading set up there. They handled official mail there and in nearby locales by 1781.They also kept a lookout for hostile ships.
            And, Mosupa adds, “The British also used Robben Island as a prison,” becoming a place of seclusion and exile. “From 1845, it was mainly used for imprisonment, but also served as a post office, a hospital for mentally ill patients, a leper colony and a military base.”
            The post office became particularly strategic during World War II. The current post office building was built in 1943 and a private bag service was introduced in that year, with post being received every day unless the seas were too rough.
            In 1960 the island became an easily monitored maximum security prison. During the apartheid era prisoners such as Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki and Jacob Zuma were locked away on the now-notorious island. “Mail correspondence for these political prisoners was strictly monitored and limited. For example, in their first years, they were allowed to send or receive only two letters a year, but this gradually increased.”
            By the time the activist Ahmed Kathrada had completed his 25th year in prison, he was able to write 40 letters a year. A book he published after being released, Letters From Robben Island, contains 86 of 900-plus pieces of correspondence he sent or released during his time of incarceration,
often smuggled out with the help of sympathetic lawyers.
            Prisoners were barred from keeping copies of incoming or outgoing mail; many carbon copies of items in the Kathrada correspondence, a key one in the modern postal history of Robben Island, are missing because they were confiscated and never returned.
            “Interference with prisoners’ correspondence by the prison censors was a frequent and highly irritating feature of prison life, especially during the 1960s,” the Setempe articled noted. Kathrada’s letters show many examples of this, for instance being mutilated by scratching or the cutting out of passages deemed “undesirable.” Outgoing letters often had to be rewritten, often more than once, for the same reason.
            Surviving letters tend to centre on “noncontroversial” topics such as family and personal matters, non-political issues, recollections of events in previous years and, to a lesser extent, life in prison, as this was something the authorities wanted to suppress.
            But eventually the tide turned, with Mandela being released in 1990 and Robben Island becoming a symbol of freedom. The release of prisoners continued up to and after the arrival of democracy in 1994, and in 1996 the last prisoners were removed and the prison closed.
            The Robben Island Museum was officially opened on 1 January, 1997, and in 1999 the island became a World Heritage Site. The South African History Online website notes: “Robben Island was declared a World Heritage Site because the buildings on the island are a reminder of its sad history
and because the same buildings also show the power of the human spirit, freedom and the victory of democracy over oppression.”
            A retail post office agency started operating on Robben Island from that year, but it mainly operates on line and has no permanent staff. The island of just 116 inhabitants sees relatively few postal transactions, although visitors do understand the importance of the island’s postal history and can visit the office on tours from the mainland.
            Travellers can visit the island on half-day tours, including a half-hour ferry trip each way, a bus tour on the island and a visit to the infamous former prison conducted by a former inmate or as part of day-long tours. And they can send a postcard or a letter containing their thoughts.
Editor's note: This article is based on one of my Commonwealth Communiqué columns for Canadian Stamp News.