The origin of Robben Island Prison was never a pleasant one, having served as a containment facility for South Africa’s unwanted for 400 years. This nondescript appears as little more than a mound of rock jutting out of Table Bay 7km off Cape Town’s shores. Yet its scarred past begins in 1671 when it was first designated as an offshore prison by the Dutch as they colonized Cape Town as their own. Held within these cells weren’t just tribal leaders hindering the colonization process but kings, princes and religious leaders from the East Indies. By 1806, the nation’s leadership changed but the prison’s purpose did not, still trapping African tribe leaders and colonial soldiers unfavored by the British.

The soldiers left and the lepers, mentally ill and contagiously infected entered but soon Robben Island became a prison once more. In the bleached white quarry still preserved today, Nelson Mandela and his brothers hacked away at rock under the blinding sun for 18 years, shut from society within a 6 by 7-foot cell. Within these walls stood hopeful Blacks, Indians and mixed-race inmates thrown aside and tortured by the apartheid regime. This hope is precisely what turned the dispiriting prisons into one of the most tangible testaments to human strength and an unforgettable discovery within South Africa.