Watching the spectacular view of Table Mountain sitting at the back of the ship to Robben Island, I could not stop imagining how, not so long ago, the prisoners must have felt when the Blouberg was taking them away from their life and families to serve their sentence in jail.

Robben Island lies about 11 kilometres north of Cape Town and has over the years become synonymous with the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa. This is where activists such as Nelson Mandela (cell number 46664), Walter Sisulu and Ahmed Kathrada among many others, were imprisoned because of their political views and protests against the apartheid regime. The island was once described by Nelson Mandela as "the harshest, most iron-fisted outpost in the South African penal system."

Robben Island which also means "Seal Island" has now become a National Museum and on 1 December 1999 was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. While attention has focused mainly on the Island's role as political prison and on the well-known prisoners held there, the 574 hectare area has been put to a variety of uses during the centuries, including as a pantry, hospital, mental asylum and military camp. Over the last four hundred years, prisoners and exiles have included slaves from Angola and West Africa, princes from the East, chiefs who resisted British colonial rule, lepers, the mentally disturbed and most recently, political opponents of the apartheid regime.