I spent a few days in South Africa and it was sensational. I definitely want to keep going back to Cape Town. Sadly, as amazing as my long weekend was, I have two regrets. First is that I didn’t get to drink “Ukomboti” as advertised by Yvonne Chaka Chaka but mostly because I didn’t visit Robben Island.
I feel very strongly about Robben Island and yes, I know it is going down in History as the prison that held the great Madiba for eighteen of his twenty seven years of incarceration but for me, it signifies more than that.
I’m not quite sure how or why this began but as a child, every time Winnie Mandela was shown on Television, one or both of my parents would call out to me to come see “The mother of the Nation”. Songs were sung in her honor and back then the only other names I had heard in songs of praise were Jesus and God. So you can imagine what I thought of Winnie.
In his bid to explain why she was praised, my Dad had to explain apartheid to me but also had to enunciate because I kept mixing it up with appetite. About the same time, my Dad got us to watch the movie Roots. Meaning, I had just seen Kunta Kinte being whipped in to Toby and then a woman whose husband was imprisoned for years for fighting apartheid was taking to the unsafe streets to continue the fight. How?
It seemed like every time I glanced at the TV, Winnie Mandela was marching in one direction or another with what looked like Black South Africa in her wake. It was and still is impressive to me but there was a scene on TV that has stayed with me and probably always will.
One day, a clip from her visit to Robben Island was being aired. First off, I couldn’t wrap my head around why people sitting so close needed telephones to communicate because of a glass barrier.
I’m sitting at my father's feet wondering why she wasn’t afraid. They had taken her husband, her protector, how was she still out there protesting? One of my folks murmured something about her being molested by the guards under the guise of searching her before she could see Madiba and then they had to explain the word molest to me. (smiling at the memory)
Before Winnie left Robben Island, she smiled at Madiba and placed her palm against the glass. He looked tired but seemed to light up and did likewise. It seemed like such a simple but weighty gesture. It evoked something in me and I couldn’t get my questions out quickly enough. First of all, you risked being imprisoned to touch glass? But i knew it was more than just “touching glass”. How awesome do you have to be to make a man imprisoned for years to smile by placing your palm on glass? I can go on forever with the questions I asked that day.
I watched that clip every day for almost a month. In retrospect, I know now that NTA 9, may have been replaying the same clip but back then I believed she went to Robben Island every day and was molested repeatedly to raise her mans’ spirit by placing her palm on his with bullet proof glass between them.
Over the years, I have channeled Winnie Mandela in my darkest moments and somehow with her in my subconscious I really can’t pull off “damsel in distress” but I guess that’s a small price to pay.
I am all grown up now but the way I felt about Winnie Mandela then has not diminished. It would have meant the world to me to go to Robben Island and put my palm to glass.
