Robben Island: Committed to Educational Outreach

I just heard that Cape Town is expecting four separate winter storm systems this coming week. I am beginning to understand why the Cape is also called "the Cape of Storms". As such, it is not looking promising that I will be visiting Robben Island as my time in South Africa is winding down.

Besides, if I understand correctly, the Robben Island maximum security prison - where Nelson Mandela, anti-Apartheid leader and former SA president, was held for 18 years before being moved to Drakenstein Prison on the mainland for the last three years of his incarceration is being renovated. As an aside, Mandela was moved to the mainland because this made negotiations for democratic change between the SA government and Mandela's African National Congress (ANC) easier to conduct. In exchange of Mandela's release, the SA government wanted Mandela's commitment through negotiation that a peaceful transition would occur.

Today, Robben Island is not only a world heritage site, due to its association with Mandela and other pro-democracy leaders such as Sebukwe, but also a nature reserve. Although I have yet to visit the island, I have had the opportunity to meet with education program officer - Thotoane Pekeche- to discuss Robben Island outreach K-12 and educational focus.

Robben Island is committed to working with schools in SA in order to share/teach the importance of heritage education in the process of democratization in the country. Besides trained heritage educators, some of whom are ex-prisoners, leading group tours of the island, there is often special programming for school children. This includes but is not limited to a "knowledge hunt" on which students must locate and understand the significance of certain key sites on the island. Following this, Robben Island educators visit schools to evaluate the learning experience while on the island. There is also a primary school on the island for children of Robben Island educators with which the organization pilots various educational programs.

For students 18 and below, Robben Island provides schools with an "apple box" which includes primary source materials such as fascimiles of personal objects of ex-prisoners. Students can then analyze these materials. Working with school-based educators, prior to planned visits, Robben Island educators can tailor these learning kids to the specific interest area of teachers be it the anti-Apartheid era of Mandela and/or the time when the island was used as an isolation area for those with leprosy. Island educators have also used prison conditions to discuss the spread of illness which often segways into a discussion on the methods of contraction for HIV/Aids.

I was particularly intrigued to learn about Robben Island's innovative "Road Shows". Collaborating with the education departments within each of the country's nine provinces, Robben Island works to identify local artists and writers who can relate to students in the locally preferred native language (English, Afrikaans, Zulu, Xhosa, etc) and help students to role-play the history of Robben Island and the significance of the island to national identity. The island also collaborates with regional tolerance and youth heritage centers such as the Hector Pietersen Museum in Soweto (Jo'bg), as well as the Cape Town Holocaust Centre in providing tolerance/diversity programming to law enforcement officers/SA Police Agency and other adult educators. Robben Island also works with local universities to provide an advanced degree in museum studies that includes coursework on conservation, collection, and public outreach.

Through this programming, Robben Island is able to identify students who exhibit leadership capabilities and then invites these students to either participate in a week-long Spring School (September) Program on the island or to involved in the Young Leaders Academy. As Robben Island was also used for political prisoners from Namibia (once controlled from SA as Southwest Africa), Namibian students also participate. This is used as an opportunity to discuss contemporary issues in SA such as crime, HIV, domestic abuse, conflict resolution, gender equality, etc. Issues are discussed in deeper terms and connections are made to other world leaders who advocated peaceful resolution of issues such as Mohatma Gandhi and an evaluation of the SA Truth and Reconciliation Trial Process is undertaken. It is hoped that through this process that participating students would go back to their communities to faciltate conflict remediation.

As a point of reference, Sebuwke was a leader within the Pan-African Congress whom the Apartheid government put in prison isolation for fear that he would influence the other prisoners through "political education".