Prison Life OVERVIEW

Banishment and imprisonment on Robben Island was used more as a means of punishment rather than as a ‘rehabilitative’ tool. Most of the people sent to the Island had at some point, over the past 500 years, opposed colonial and apartheid rule in South Africa. Both colonial and apartheid rule divided people on the basis of race, class, gender and ethnicity. It denied the indigenous people their political and human rights. The daily lives of those banished to, or imprisoned on the Island mirrored the status quo and practices of colonialism and apartheid.