One of the tourist sites we think you would love to visit when you are off the shores of your home country in Africa is the Robben Island located on an island in Table Bay, a few kilometers off the west coast of Bloubergstrand, north side of Cape town in South Africa.
The Robben Island is a fun place to connect with nature and come to terms with the realities of South Africa's struggle against apartheid and systemic racism. This island up until 1996 housed the prison facility where the Late Nelson Mandela was confined to for 18 out of the 27 years of his imprisonment. The Great Mandela, a lawyer and political activist would later become the country's first democratically elected black president in 1994, and was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize. With the end of the apartheid, the island was converted from a prison yard into a living museum. In 1999, UNESCO declared the island a World Heritage Site for its importance to South Africa's political history and development of a democratic society.
Every year, thousands of visitors take a ferry from the Victoria & Alfred waterfront in Cape town for tours of the island and its former prison. Many of the tour guides were former prisoners. The ferry from the waterfront takes three tours per day to and from the island on a journey of about three and a half hours. Various historic sites that form part of the Robben Islands Museum include the island graveyard, Nelson Mandela's prison cell, the bluestone quarry, Robert Sobukwe's house, old World War II military outposts and the maximum-security prison. The Kramat mosque is also seen on the west of the maximum-security prison, and it signifies the relationship between Islam and Robben Island.
Robben Island is also home to wide life. You would see animal species like penguins, seals, ostriches, mountain tortoises, Egyptian geese and rabbits there. If you would love to stay a little longer on the island to make exciting memories of your time in South Africa, there are a variety of hotel facilities and services that would make your stay worthwhile. So, when you visit South Africa, do all you can to find your way to Robben Island. Do follow us on all of our social media pages as we bring your more exciting tourist sites in Africa… Let’s spread the thrills.