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Volume XV (2004)
Book Review: Robben Island and Prisoner Resistance
to Apartheid
David T. Jervis Department of History and Political
Science, Saint Leo University, Saint Leo, FL 33574-6665
Buntman, Fran Lisa. Robben Island and Prisoner Resistance to
Apartheid. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 358 pp.
$65.00 (cloth).
Many political figures, especially those trying to remake their
societies from outside the established political process, have spent
time in prison. Leaders with such diverse political orientations as
Fidel Castro, Ruhollah Khomeini, Vaclev Havel, Gerry Adams, and Nelson
Mandela were all incarcerated. While there has been some examination
of the impact of prison in biographies and autobiographies of these
figures, there is little systematic examination of the ways that
prison shaped their political goals and strategies. Robben Island
and Prisoner Resistance to Apartheid examines this issue,
concentrating on the experiences of those imprisoned on South Africa’s
notorious Robben Island. The author, a member of the Sociology
Department at George Washington University, does not claim that the
role played by the Islanders was more significant than that played by
those outside the prison, but she argues that it is a role that has
not been examined adequately. Buntman relies largely on interviews
with former prisoners and warders, although she also examines records
of the prison administration as well as secondary sources.
Robben Island, off the
coast of Cape Town, had served as a prison for many years. The number
of political prisoners there increased in the early 1960s as protests
against South Africa’s apartheid system intensified and the
regime passed ever more draconian security legislation. Several
hundred were already imprisoned by 1964, when the African National
Congress’s leaders–Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki, Ahmed
Kathrada, among others–arrived. Later waves arrived after the
Soweto-inspired uprisings of 1976 and the civil unrest of the early
1980s. Throughout, of course, Mandela and other ANC leaders remained.
Not until 1991 was the last political prisoner released or removed
from the Island.
Conditions are
undoubtedly harsh in all prisons, but those in charge of Robben Island
sought to make life there especially difficult. Some of the guards
were brutal, hard labor was required of most prisoners, and there were
daily humiliations. The apartheid system was replicated within
the prison: the entire prison staff was white, while all the prisoners
were "black" (African, Coloured, or Asian). Apartheid rules
governed the provision of daily amenities: African prisoners received
only 12 ounces of corn meal each day, while Asians and Coloureds
received 14 ounces; Coloureds and Asians received 6 ounces of meat or
fish four times a week, but Africans received only 5 ounces. To
further heighten tensions, prisoners of different political
affiliations were housed together. In the 1960s, this meant jailing
African National Congress (ANC) members with those of the Pan-Africanist
Congress (PAC). Later, after the Soweto protests of the mid-1970s,
there was a large influx of prisoners who advocated Black
Consciousness ideas. That group was also of a very different
generation than Mandela and his colleagues, adding generational
strains to political ones.
These details of daily
life might lead one to expect the prison population to be atomized and
focused solely on daily needs. That was likely the intent of prison
authorities, but the prisoners were able to resist, to survive, and
even to thrive during their years on Robben Island. "Resistance" is
conceptualized here as more than just a refusal to submit to prison
authorities; it also refers to efforts to remake the power
relationships within the prison and, ultimately, society as a whole.
Prisoners’ resistance took two forms, "resistance for survival" and
"resistance beyond survival." While there was not a linear progression
from one type of resistance to the other, conditions had improved
dramatically by the mid-1970s so there was greater emphasis on
resistance beyond survival after that time.
Creating conditions for
survival in prison is a prerequisite for any further resistance
strategies. To combat the conditions identified previously, prisoners
resorted to a number of tactics. These could be as simple as mouthing
an unspoken profanity at a guard. More organized efforts included a
hunger strike, as occurred in 1965 or 1966, and utilizing legal
channels, e.g., preparing court petitions or writing letters to prison
authorities. The prisoners also had a number of allies outside the
prison. These included former prisoners, Helen Suzman—a South African
parliamentarian, and the International Committee of the Red Cross.
While external actors were important, both Suzman and prison
authorities agree that the actions of the prisoners, themselves, were
crucial to changing prison conditions because, in Suzman’s words,
"they were strong and they were united and they were organized and
they were informed…" (Suzman quoted at p. 58).
Resistance strategies did
not end as prison conditions improved. Struggling for more than mere
survival, prisoners sought to improve their physical and mental
health, not only as a means of relieving boredom but also to improve
themselves and to prepare for what many believed would be a post-apartheid
order in their lifetimes. One of the most important of these
"strategies of resistance beyond survival" was education. The Island
was considered a "university" by many, a term usually taken to mean
that prisoners were exposed to the insights of Mandela and other
leading resistance figures. Yet it was also a university in the more
traditional sense. Prisoners enrolled in correspondence courses
offered by the University of South Africa and other distance education
institutions, some earning college degrees. There were education
programs within the prison, too, as better educated prisoners taught
less well-educated ones. There was also political education. Some
prisoners taught classes in political theory and later, as change
became more likely, a prisoner trained in political science offered
classes on different constitutional models. In addition to education,
there were also efforts to improve the prisoners’ physical health,
e.g., football (soccer) and rugby tournaments as well as tennis
lessons. Recreational and cultural activities, including chess and
checkers games, ballroom dancing competitions, the staging of plays,
and instruction in musical instruments, were also available.
Besides keeping prisoners
busy, these activities helped them develop political, organizational,
and leadership skills. Over time, they were able to transform the
"state of nature" that had existed on the Island into a new social
system, one governed by an unspoken but widely recognized social
contact. To construct this new society, prisoners had to tolerate
different points of view, reach out to those across communal and
organizational divides, and be open to new ideas, all necessary skills
for the subsequent transition from apartheid to democracy.
Ironically, then, the prisoners’ incarceration was not so much a
barrier to post-1990 reform as an opportunity for them to develop the
skills to help make the new system work. Not surprisingly, then,
Buntman is able to identify many former prisoners who are now
prominent in government, business, and civil society. These men have
been able to "tak[e] the lessons learned from Robben Island to other
spheres of South African life" (p. 174).
Of course, most prisoners
did not want to wait until their release to try to influence politics
on the outside. The desire to end apartheid that had led to
their imprisonment did not eliminate when they arrived on the Island,
and prisoners consciously sought to influence politics outside the
prison. This took many forms, direct and indirect. One indirect way
was the prisoners’ serving as beacons of hope for apartheid’s
foes. Prisoners sought to keep their organizations, typically banned
on the outside, alive in prison. More direct ways for furthering the
struggle included giving instructions to departing prisoners. All were
urged to work for improved prison conditions; some prisoners were
given more specific tasks, e.g., getting black unions to shift from
economic to political demands, joining community organizations and, in
a few cases, going into exile to promote the struggle from abroad.
There were also occasions when strategic discussions among the
prisoners shaped the strategies of the anti-apartheid movement
on the outside. An important example is the United Democratic Front,
the umbrella organization of anti-apartheid organizations created in
the early 1980s. While there is some disagreement on this point, some
prisoners claim that the UDF "was an idea from Robben Island" (Vronda
Banda quoted at p. 164). Moreover, after the formation of the UDF,
many ex-prisoners served in its leadership. To cite another example,
it was ANC prisoners who developed the ANC strategy of negotiating
with Inkatha in KwaZulu-Natal rather than confronting it.
The clearest illustration
of Buntman’s themes is that the state chose to begin to negotiate the
end of apartheid with a prisoner, Nelson Mandela. It is true,
of course, that this decision was due, in part, to Mandela’s
prominence and to the ability to keep the talks secret precisely
because he was a prisoner. However, the fact the Mandela had survived
more than two decades in prison, that he and his fellow prisoners had
developed their own community and transformed prison life through
mutual tolerance and reaching out to former foes, and that the
prisoners had been able to influence politics on the outside made
Mandela a desirable partner once the regime had decided to end
apartheid.
To what extent are
Buntman’s ideas applicable to other cases? No two prisons are alike
nor are the governments which send prisoners away, but she does find
evidence of similar resistance patterns elsewhere. There are numerous
examples of prisoners resisting to survive, as one would expect given
the cruel conditions most political prisoners confront. She also finds
examples of efforts to resist beyond survival. However, there are few
cases where prisoners had such an important impact on the political
process outside the prison (one exception is the role of IRA prisoners
in Northern Ireland). Why was the South African case unique in this
regard? Perhaps it is a result of the nature of the prisons, their
prisoners, and the conditions of their confinement. In South Africa,
most leading prisoners were together in the same prison rather than
placed in different prisons, gulag-archipelago style. The
prisoners also understood from the start that they would be imprisoned
for lengthy periods. Those two conditions enabled and perhaps forced
them to develop knowledge of and working relationships with other
leaders as well as an incentive to get along with their jailers.
Without those conditions, it seems unlikely that the Islanders would
have had the opportunity or the willingness to construct their own
prison society and the skills to help shape the new South Africa.
Despite this inability to
apply some of her points to other cases, Buntman has written an
important book. She has opened Robben Island, illustrated how the
prisoners there were able to survive as long as they did, and shown
how, despite their incarceration, they played an important role in the
creation of the new South Africa.
Volume XV |
