Visiting Robben Island where post-apartheid enthusiasm has been replaced by bitterness and disillusionment

A year ago today, I visited Robben Island for the second time. We were taken by coach around the island with a tour guide who had been a political prisoner for eight years from 1977. He was in parts funny, moving and inspiring although with a touch of bitterness as his five-year contract as a guide had been terminated from the end of the following week.

We were shown the house of Robert Sobukwe, the leader of the Pan African Congress (a breakaway from Mandela’s ANC). He was kept separate from all the other prisoners as his black nationalist ideas were seen as particularly dangerous. We toured the lime quarry where Mandela worked and where his eyesight was severely damaged because the apartheid prison authorities refused to issue sunglasses to protect the prisoners’ eyes from the glare of the sun.

Mandela’s cell on Robben Island

After the tour of the island we went into the prison itself where another former political prisoner (who served five years from the age of 18) told us about the degradations experienced by black prisoners. Finally, we were taken to the courtyard where Mandela and the other ANC leaders had been forced to break stones with small hammers, and then along the corridor past Mandela’s tiny cell.

We spoke to the guide who said that he relives the horror of his imprisonment with every tour and that he would leave if only he could get another job on the mainland. 

Currently the only guides who show people around the actual prison are former political prisoners but they are getting older and one day there won’t be any.

I have been to Robben Island before and had had a similar tour, back in 1998. However, at that time there was enthusiasm for the future. Mandela was still President and there was none of the bitterness and disillusionment that we detected today. Nevertheless, it was an inspiring and moving experience.

(Postscript: As a teenager growing up in Cape Town in the 1970s, from my bedroom window I could see Robben Island in the distance out to sea. But it wasn’t until I arrived in England that I first saw a photograph of Mandela – an old black and white photo taken many years before.)

Who from Brighton’s past should we be remembering? The film ‘Vindication Swim’ recalls the achievements of the amazing Mercedes Gleitze

(This item first appeared in the Brighton Argus on 13th March 2024)

Brighton has a poor record of preserving the memory of those who have gone before. How many Brightonians, not least those who are recent arrivals, know who Herbert Carden, Dorothy Stringer or Lewis Cohen were? And why should they? The City Council does little to commemorate these and other individuals who helped make the city what it is. The Argus remembers them, and Brighton and Hove Buses names significant people from Brighton’s past on its buses and on a special website. It should be commended for this.

From time to time I write about people I have known who have died, people like Selma Montford, Dennis Hobden, Ruth Larkin, Bernie Jordan and Bob Cristofili. Mary Clarke is the ‘forgotten suffragette’ in spite of being Emmeline Pankhurst’s sister. Mary ran the Brighton office of the Women’s Social and Political Union. She died on Christmas Day 1910 from a brain haemorrhage probably caused by rough treatment at the hands of the police and prison authorities immediately before her passing. There is no memorial for Mary other than her name appearing on the front of a Brighton bus. There is now a campaign to have a statue of Mary Clarke erected in the gardens of the Royal Pavilion estate. 

Another long-forgotten Brightonian is Mercedes Gleitze. She was born in Brighton who, in 1927, became the first British woman to swim the English Channel. Her swimming achievements were not ‘limited’ to that. She is believed to be the first person to swim the Straights of Gibraltar and was the first person to swim to Robben Island and back to Cape Town, a sea I know well as I was brought up there and can testify to the currents and coldness of those waters.

After nearly 100 years during which time she had become largely forgotten, her legacy is now secure through a film that went on general release last Friday, deliberately coinciding with International Women’s Day. The film, Vindication Swim, features the amazing Kirsten Callaghan and the equally impressive John Locke. Remarkably, it was written and directed by a 23-year-old Brightonian, Elliott Hasler. If you warch just one film this year, make sure it’s Vindication Swim.

With Kirsten Callaghan and John Locke (I’m the one who didn’t dress up for the occasion!)

After a special screening of the film on International Women’s Day at Brighton’s Duke of York cinema, a cinema that Mercedes herself had visited, Kirsten Callaghan, John Locke and Elliott Hasler answered questions from the audience. Kirsten described some of the discomforts and challenges faced by Mercedes which she, too, had experienced. For example, she wore a heavy 100-year-old one-piece bathing suit. The leather in the goggles she used bled, resulting in a disgusting taste seeping into her mouth. On one occasion she was in the water for four hours, with the salt affecting her mouth and sense of taste. Elliott, too, spent lengthy periods filming in the water, but he had the protection of a wetsuit! John, on the other hand, stayed in a small support boat as had his character, Harold Best, who had coached Mercedes.

All the scenes in the sea were filmed off the south coast. No use was made of stage tanks nor ‘green screen’ technology where subjects can be superimposed onto virtual backgrounds. 

Back to Mercedes herself. Her first endurance swimming record was for 26 hours. Over several years she extended this record to 45 and, subsequently, 46 hours. She had become a popular and famous personality, and when she undertook these endurance swims in public swimming baths, crowds would attend and encourage her by singing together.

Most of Mercedes epic swims, including her world records for endurance swimming, were sponsored.  She used her sponsorship and winnings to open accommodation for homeless people, particularly homeless women, with the first Mercedes Gleitze Home opening in Leicester in 1933. The charity bearing her name continues to operate providing accommodation for homeless people but, sadly, not in Brighton. She helped unemployed people to move from the north to Leicester where there were jobs. She is also said to have supported the extension of the franchise to women below the age of 30 in 1928.

Towards the end of her life, Mercedes became increasingly reclusive. She denied her past achievements and would not discuss them with her family.  She died in1981 in London aged 80. There is now a blue plaque commemorating this daughter of Brighton at the house in Freshfield Road where she was born in 1900.

I hope that in future more Brighton women, perhaps not as exceptional as Mercedes Gleitze, can be remembered for their own extraordinary achievements.

Amongst today’s politicians, there isn’t a single one who is worthy of being mentioned in the same breath as Nelson Mandela

(This item first appeared in the Brighton Argus on 29th November 2023)

Next Tuesday is the tenth anniversary of the death of Nelson Mandela. Today he is one of the most recognisable people on the planet, even a decade after his death.  Yet in the sixties and early seventies, Mandela had become invisible in South Africa and throughout the world.

He had been in prison since 1963 and for most of that time his image was banned in South Africa. In fact, displaying any image of Mandela carried a prison sentence. He could not be quoted in public and for the majority of white South Africans, he was out of sight and out of mind. For the first seventeen years of his incarceration he was held in a prison on Robben Island, six miles off the coast of Cape Town. 

When growing up in Cape Town, I had no particular view of Mandela.  I had heard his name but knew little, if anything, about him.  When my friends and I cycled to Cape Town Docks, we were aware of the high security berth where the ‘terrorists’ were taken from the mainland to Robben Island, and that Mandela was one of them.  That area now forms part of the Waterfront, a mecca for tourists and rich South Africans alike.

From my bedroom window I could see Robben Island in the distance out to sea. But it wasn’t until I arrived in England that I first saw a photograph of Mandela – an old black and white photo taken many years before. Today I have on my wall a large ANC election poster from 1994, dominated by the warm, smiling face of Mandela who we had been told in the bad old days of apartheid, wanted to drive all white people into the sea. Archbishop Desmond Tutu used to quip: “How can we drive you into the sea when you don’t even allow us on to the beaches?” Under apartheid the best beaches were reserved for white people only.

In the nineteen sixties, seventies and eighties, few would have predicted that a peaceful transition would be achieved, from apartheid to democracy, nor that a single individual, long out of public view, serving a life sentence for acts of terrorism, would be the catalyst for this monumental change. Many people tend to forget that Mandela did, indeed, lead the arm struggle, and was responsible for planting bombs. Margaret Thatcher is alleged to have described Mandela as “that grubby little terrorist”. But, as they say, one person’s ‘terrorist’ is another person’s freedom fighter.

The world now rightly regards him one of the greatest figures of the modern era, and pays homage to him for his dignity, his courage, and his willingness to forgive. Yet it is worth remembering he had his shortcomings, and today’s corrupt ANC government is also part of his legacy.

A true monument to Mandela, himself without an ounce of corruption, is to build on the legacy of the Rainbow Nation, by routing out the corruption that is endemic throughout the new ruling class in South Africa, and which is holding back the cause of fairness and freedom.

We need the likes of Nelson Mandela today in many parts of the world, not least in Israel and Palestine, someone who can reach across historic divides, of painful, violent histories, who can be a catalyst for peace.

In spite of the above, I have always been uncomfortable at how people have co-opted the image of Mandela to demonstrate their own virtues. It was always easy for progressives in the U.K. to oppose the abomination of apartheid from six thousand miles away, yet turn a blind eye to injustice and oppression closer to home. 

When Mandela addressed a combined session of the British Parliament, there was not a single dissenting voice amongst the MPs and Lords present. They basked in being in his presence.  Yet many had not lifted a finger in his support when it did not suit their interests and prejudices. Today, too, many of our leaders fail to deal with the injustices in our own society, like homelessness, poverty and violence. They might say the right thing, but words (unlike under apartheid) come cheap. The Conservatives have destroyed much of the welfare state, while a likely Labour government will fail to act because they want to be seen as being fiscally responsible. 

If political leaders in this country had a tiny fraction of the courage and determination of Nelson Mandela, then great things could be achieved. But amongst them there isn’t a single one who is worthy of being mentioned in the same breath as him.