Pilgrims, posers and pop history

Pilgrims, posers and pop history 

Inside Robben Island

A romp, with diversions, through Robben Island Museum history, written for the global market

Nouns of number, or multitude, such as Mob, Parliament, Rabble, House of Commons, Regiment, Court of King's Bench, Den of Thieves, and the like – William Cobbett, 1762-1835

A man in jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company – Samuel Johnson 1709-1784

When you read a biography remember that the truth is never fit for publication – George Bernard Shaw 1856 -1950.

Fast track affirmative action in the heritage sector. -- from an article in Ilifa Labantu, June 2002. (Robben Island Museum newsletter, Heritage of the People.)

Garth King spent four years living on Robben Island from 1998 to 2002, working as a “media and marketing consultant” and a “publications and productions co-ordinator” for the young museum. Here are some of his island stories:

By Garth King

Introduction

United States President Bill Clinton and Hilary were there. Nelson Mandela, was there too. Standing on the rough, scrubby kikuyu lawn of the Victorian guest house, the Governor's Residence, on Robben Island, one fine day in 1995.

It was just one year into South Africa's new, shiny-bright democracy. Several gangs of TV cameramen and other media people were there too for the pomp and ceremony. A critical point of the pomp was the delivery to the island of a large luxury bus, which Bill had kindly donated. The crowd on the lawn were waiting for a large helicopter, which was airlifting the bus via attached cables, to arrive.

The chopper appeared on the horizon. The dignitaries stood around clutching their chilled chardonnays, carefully watching the spectacle. It came closer, and the large bus beneath it was just visible. Slowly it started to bridge the 10km distance from the mainland.  Everybody was watching. The copter and the bus began to loom large as it swept  oddly, imperiously towards the striped-roofed somewhat scruffy flagship VIP venue on the island. About 200m or so from the island, one of the cables inexplicably snapped.

The copter lurched sideways and the bus suddenly dropped into the Atlantic, and sunk quickly in very deep waters -- to the stunned amazement of the then-leader of the free world and his buddy, the planet's most fabulous freedom fighter. The bus was never recovered, or replaced.

It was a a prophetic moment in the annals of the history of the young Robben Island Museum, that holy of holies of the apartheid struggle, whose own epicentre remains Mandela's cell in the old apartheid regime's Maximum Security Prison, where Mandela spent 16 years of his 27-year incarceration.

It was early days for the soon-to-be national museum, national monument and World Heritage Site.