Its human cargo now on board, the truck lurched off down the gravel road towards the prison compound. Drawing closer, the new inmates could see that the cell blocks in which they were to live had been crudely converted from ramshackle old military buildings. They were basic in the extreme.
On arrival, the prisoners were thrown off the back of the lorry as if they were nothing more than sacks of millet and made to queue for their first meal on the island – a porridge of thin maize served up from big metal drums. All of the men had been held in mainland prisons before sentencing and, although rations there had hardly been haute cuisine, they had at least been nourishing and sufficient in quantity.
At Sedick’s first meal, some of the new arrivals were still so sick from the boat ride they were unable to keep their food down and, although they were beyond hungry, they left most of their porridge. It would, however, be the first and last time they would refuse food on the island. The maize gruel tasted dreadful and smelled brackish and sour, but the prisoners soon learned that, for them at least, food on the island would be in short supply. A few months earlier, when Tony Suze arrived on the island, the food had been out, uncovered, in the open for a long time. It was cold and speckled with bird droppings. As he spooned the slop hungrily into his mouth, he remembers, seagulls flapped around his head, screeching. It sounded to him as though the birds were laughing at the new prisoners, mocking them, vowing to return, to scavenge and sabotage each and every meal the men ate.
Each man was identified by his prison number. In the case of Isaacs that was 883/64, signifying he was the 883rd prisoner to be sentenced in 1964. After the meal, the men were forced to strip and change into their prison uniforms. The uniform for coloured and Asian prisoners consisted of a top, long trousers, socks, and shoes. These men were also afforded slightly better conditions across the board. Blacks were issued with shorts, to remind them that, in white supremacist eyes, they were nothing more than boys and, on their feet, they were allowed to wear only rubber sandals roughly fashioned from old car tyres, no socks. Racial distinctions would permeate every area of life on the island.
All the men were ordered to carry four items in their shirt pocket at all times – their identification card, tooth brush, spoon, and towel. The spoon was used for all food, no knives or forks would be needed. The towel was so small that it fitted easily into the pocket.
In fact, when Sedick was kitted out, he fared little better. He was given shoes, but they were hardly a pair: one was a size seven, the other a nine. A fellow new arrival became itchy after having worn his shirt for a few minutes. Looking inside, he discovered it was alive with lice.
Each of the men was then assigned a cell block. Black prisoners were ordered to remove their car-tyre sandals before entering their allotted block and throw them into a pile outside in the yard. All the men’s hearts sank when they were marched inside. Old military dormitories that would once have been home to a maximum of twenty men now housed as many as sixty prisoners, sleeping cheek by jowl on meagre sisal mats. Most of the buildings were poorly maintained, and damp and draughty, and all the inmates had to keep them warm at night were a couple of almost transparently thin blankets. There were no pillows.
Once inside, Sedick swiftly realized that Robben Island Prison was home not only to political prisoners such as himself, but also to some of the most notorious murderers, gang leaders, and violent criminals in South Africa. It was deliberate policy to house the ‘terrorists’ with common-law felons who were bound to give them a tough ride. The political prisoners would be fighting enemies on two fronts.
The principle of divide and rule lay at the heart of everything. Along with virtually all the ‘politicals’, Sedick had been classified as a D-category prisoner. A-category inmates enjoyed the most privileges – newspapers, even radios; B and C progressively fewer; D prisoners were allowed virtually none. Prisoners in this lowest category were not eligible for parole. No matter what his behaviour, Sedick would serve at least every day, every hour, of his twelve-year sentence. His formal complaints and efforts to publicize the abuses in the prison led to a charge of attempting to ‘undermine the good order and reputation’ of the prison service. A year was added to his sentence. When asked today if he was guilty of such offences, Isaacs just nods and says ‘Of course, I was.’
To further promote disharmony, the prison authorities tried wherever possible to mix African National Congress members with inmates who held allegiance to other organizations, such as PAC and the South West Africa People’s Organization (SWAPO). They assumed that holding adherents of these different factions in close proximity to one another would bring out the worst in the men and that their differences would cause disunity and fractiousness in the prison population.
The men who ran the prisons were, however, accustomed to dealing with traditional criminals, and this led them to make a number of mistakes in their policies towards political prisoners. Their assumption that nothing could ever unify the men on Robben Island was one of their worst errors of judgement. The prison brought together committed political opponents of apartheid from across the country. Men who might otherwise never have met had the opportunity to discuss and debate issues and to build on one another’s experiences. They quickly found common cause in their opposition to both apartheid and the efforts of the prison to break them, and that became the first step towards finding other things that would unite and bring them together.
At eight o’clock, the prisoners were ordered to sleep, but it was freezing cold and the sparse matting that served as a mattress was unyielding and desperately uncomfortable. Lights in the cell blocks were left burning throughout the hours of darkness, and warders patrolled the corridors, often removing their shoes and tiptoeing in stocking feet so inmates wouldn’t hear their approach. Talking was banned and anyone found so much as whispering would be in for a beating.
Most of the prisoners found that the nights were the worst. Left in silence, alone with their thoughts, their minds would drift back across the unsettled waters to the mainland, to home, to their family, their wife and children. Of course they missed their loved ones and had understandable concerns about their financial and domestic well-being – whole families were left without a breadwinner, struggling to put food on the table and clothe their children – but there was also the constant and very real fear that family members were themselves in danger: of being put under surveillance by the security forces, persecuted because their father, brother, uncle, cousin, or nephew was incarcerated on Robben Island. After over a decade and a half of apartheid, by 1964, South Africa was virtually a police state. Torture and murder in police and military cells was abetted by freelance, vigilante justice carried out by members of the security forces. The families of Robben Island prisoners were particular targets.
All the inmates could do was hope – hope that comrades and friends would still be at liberty, and helping their families to survive. The prisoners had to believe this, but doubt crept in at night, ‘the enemy within’, as Nelson Mandela called it. The prisoners had all come to know what the apartheid regime was capable of, had suffered its interrogation and torture. What if a loved one were being subjected to the same treatment? Visits were restricted and letters heavily censored. With no knowledge or information about what might be happening back at home, countless nights were spent fretting. Was it morally right to commit singlemindedly to a political cause, whatever the personal sacrifice, whatever the cost to one’s family?
From day one, life for the prisoners on the island fell into a monotonous pattern. Awoken at 5.30 a.m. by the harsh clang of an iron bell, they were allowed to wash and shave in cold brackish sea water before being whipped, naked, out of their compound and subjected to the humiliation and indignity of a full body-cavity search.
For the black prisoners, each morning would start with a mad scrum, a frantic search through the pile of car-tyre sandals for a pair that might remotely fit. On Tony Suze’s first morning, he realized that the order of the day was simply quickly to grab whatever sandals you could. Perhaps they wouldn’t be a pair – one too small, another far too big, maybe two left feet; probably they would not be the right size – and prisoners would regularly