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Robben Island is a low-lying island of sand and rock which guards the entrance to Table Bay.
It is two kilometres wide, three and a half kilometres long and is approximately seven
kilometres from Green Point.
One of Bartolomeus Dias' captains, Jao del Infante, and his crew were probably the first
persons to land on Robben Island. The landing took place in 1488 and other Portuguese
followed until 1502. Later Dutch and English sailors came ashore to kill seals and penguins
for food and to fetch fresh water. Due to the abundance of penguins and penguin eggs on
the Island, the English sailors named it Penguin Island. The Dutch knew the Island from the
outset as Seal or Sea-Dog Island and it is from the Dutch word for seal - robbe - that the
present name derives. In 1601 an English captain began the tradition of leaving sheep on the
Island so that they might breed and provide meat supplies to sailors.

In 1611 Thomas Aldworth, a member of the English East India Company, proposed that
about 100 convicts be brought to the Cape and left there to fend for themselves. In 1615 ten
convicts under the leadership of John Cross was put ashore at Table Bay. Unfortunately the
Khoikhoi attacked the men and Cross begged the skipper of the English ship Hope to provide
them with guns and a longboat so that they could base themselves safely on Robben Island.
Thus the first group of convicts arrived on Robben Island.

The convicts included Khoikhoi slaves and political prisoners. From the Dutch colonies in
the East Indies political prisoners such as the Prince of Ternate and the Prince of Madura
were banned to Robben Island. During the cattle-killing episode in the 1850's a number of
Xhosa chiefs and other influential Xhosa persons were banned to the Island. These included
the prophets Makana and Nongqawuse and chiefs Makana and Maqoma.

The island has a long history of banishment, imprisonment and human suffering. It has
consistently been used by colonial governments to consolidate their power on the mainland.
Robben Island has therefore housed many leaders of indigenous resistance to colonialism
from the mid-seventeenth century onwards. From 1657, political prisoners were sent to the
Island from the shifting boundary of colonial expansion within South Africa and in the
Dutch colonies of East Asia. These prisoners included the Khoi leader Autshumato from
Cape Town, imprisoned in 1657, the Imam Tuan Guru from the Trinate Islands in East Asia
imprisoned in 1780, and the Khoi leader David Stu urman from the Eastern Cape
imprisoned in 1809 and again in 1819. Xhosa leaders like Makhanda and Maqoma from the
Eastem Cape were imprisoned on the Island in 1819 and 1858 respectively, the Hlubi chief
Langalibalele from Natal was imprisoned there in 1874, and Korana, Oorlam and Gcaleka
leaders from the Northern and Eastern Cape were imprisoned there in the 1870s. 

From the early 1960s until 1991, Robben Island as a prison housed what was probably
the largest group of black male sentenced prisoners in the country and certainly the most
significant group of anti-apartheid leaders in South Africa, including people like Nelson
Mandela, Robert Sobukwe, Neville Alexander, Ahmed Kathrada, Walter Sisulu
and Govan Mbeki. In 1996, when the criminal prison finally closed, it was the oldest place
of imprisonment in South Africa.

For more information visit the robben Island website
http://www.robben-island.org.za/