The weekend of February 24-26, we had homestays in Ocean View, the “colored” community that we had visited on our first tour of Cape Town. I stayed with a Muslim family that had two adorable young daughters, and we spent the weekend hanging out, coloring, watching movies, and singing karaoke for what must have been a record breaking number of hours. Beyond the interesting conversations and culture shock from both ends, I think the most valuable part of my homestay was simply being with a family for a weekend. I spent most of my time not just with my immediate host family, but their aunts, uncles, grandparents, and cousins, too. The last day of our stay was also my birthday, and so my host-aunt baked me beautiful cupcakes in the shape of a 21!

On Sunday, our house took a trip to Robben Island, the famous prison that held political activists, such as Nelson Mandela, during the apartheid. After taking a ferry to the island, we explored the jail under the guidance of a former prisoner. He described to us the environment of the Robben Island prison, which seemed unique because it housed only political prisoners rather than criminal offenders. The leaders of the anti-apartheid movement were kept in secluded cells so that they wouldn’t be able to pass on information to the other prisoners, but our guide emphasized that there was a general spirit of brotherhood in the prison, especially in prisoner education. He described the meal portions that were allocated by race, the mail that was cut up and censored, and the protests that the prisoners would organize to end this type of discrimination at Robben Island. It was a unique experience to have a guide who was a former prisoner, however we didn’t really get any personal memories about his experience as a political activist or as a political prisoner. This idea didn’t strike me at first, however after reading an article about post-apartheid memory for my African studies class, the notion of a former prisoner “on display” and sharing his story multiple times a day seemed a bit problematic. The goal of the museum is to convey an authentic memory, however there seems to be a formulated, tourist-oriented, public narrative that masks some of the reality of the prisoners’ experience. Here is a passage of the article that outlines the potential conflict between personal experience and national memory at Robben Island:

“The major question I ask here can be phrased as follows: Between the hegemony of the narrative of the anti-apartheid struggle and the role of Robben Island in it, on the one hand, and the discursive economy of the heritage industry and global tourism on the other, is there a space for the truly personal lives and subjectivities of the ex-prisoner tour guides to emerge in their narratives and memories of their time on the island? In short, can personal, private memories be produced and narrated against the grain of the public, collective memory in this instance?”

(Harry Garuba, Museums, Mimesis, and the Narratives of the Tour Guides of Robben Island)