The Robben Island Museum Tours Department includes some ex-political prisoners who act as tour guides on Cape Town's World Heritage Site.

One such guide is Lionel Davis, who, in April 1964, was sentenced to six years on Robben Island, after being found guilty of conspiring to commit sabotage. Now Lionel lives on the Island with his family and is the chairperson of the Robben Island Village Association.

Today, Lionel speaks evenly of his former jailers and the appalling conditions he had to endure in the early 1960s and 1970s at the Robben Island Maximum Security Prison. Guides such as Lionel bring to life a South African heritage, which speaks to all people of heroic endurance in the face of adversity and the triumph of the human spirit over evil.