“Each One, Teach One”

“At the kitchen we were given a metal plate with steaming hot porridge and we had to carry it while being chased towards our cells in “B” section. Our hands were burning, our feet were being torn, and blows fell on our heads, shoulders and backs as we rushed along. The warders lashed out at us with batons and pieces of rubber hosepipe, leaving us alone for only five minutes while we tried to gulp down the scalding porridge. We did not even have spoons and when we asked for some we were told to use our bloody fingers—I personally could not manage more than a few scoops with my fingers, and soon we were rushed into our cells: fifty into B1 and fifty into B2, the first occupants of a new, freshly painted prison block.”Indres Naidoo, Island in Chains by Prisoner 885/63, 19821Located just off the coast of Cape Town, South Africa, Robben Island is perhaps best known for its most famous “resident” Nelson Mandela, who spent eighteen of his twenty-seven years of political incarceration there before becoming the first president of a new, democratic South Africa in 1994.Now a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a South African National Heritage Site, the island, preserved as a museum, joins Table Mountain (listed as one of the New Natural Wonders of the World in 2011) as one of Cape Town’s top tourist attractions.Practically, it requires navigating the Victoria & Albert Waterfront shopping complex to board a ferry at the “Nelson Mandela Gateway to Robben Island” pier. (The V&A is primarily a mall but also a working harbor with fishing trawlers in the dry dock and superyachts in fancy marinas next to expensive hotels. Royalty shops there. Jamie Oliver loved his meal and meeting the kitchen crew in one of the top-tier restaurants, Instagram updated his followers not so long ago.)The thirty to forty minute boat-ride is pleasant enough. But rolling footage onboard of South Africa’s troubled past remind passengers of where they are going. Once disembarked, 300 or so bodies are ushered onto buses which will take them on the first part of the guided three-hour tour of the island. (The second part, into the cellblocks, is by foot, led by an ex-prisoner.)The bus ride along well-kept roads reveals an infrastructure not only of a maximum security prison on an island less than five miles from Cape Town (a geographical detail crueler than imagination allows); it also provides a sketch of the community that serves it. A playground. A chapel.2 A graveyard. Homes with gardens.3A fenced property with a single small house and rows of cages for guard dogs signals the end of family space. Here, in the “Robert Sobukwe House” is where the founder of the Pan African Congress (PAC) was kept in solitary confinement for six years after having organized protests against Apartheid “pass” laws in Johannesburg in 1960.4 (“Sharpeville Massacre” is how the unprovoked killing of sixty-nine protesters by police is commemorated.) The guide adds the detail that Sobukwe was surrounded by no less than six guards at all times of his confinement: two inside; four outside the building. No scullery duties or communal eating permitted. This is not an insignificant detail.Before arriving at the prison proper, the bus stops not far from a pile of rocks in an open space. This is the Lime Quarry where prisoners were made to work during daylight hours. The limestone collected was largely unnecessary; it was more important to deplete any energy for political discussions after dark.The tour guide explains that the rock pile wasn’t always there. On his first return after release, Nelson Mandela chose a rock to lay down in remembrance of his—and his comrades’—time in the quarry. Other former inmates able to visit (some of whom remain as guides) followed suit.But the cave to the left of the rocks, visitors are told, is where prisoners were permitted to seek shade for their lunch break. It was outfitted with two buckets to be used as toilets—a “luxury” refused by internal agreement between prisoners to not disrespect the boundary between where one eats and ablutes. Instead, it became a place of both physical and intellectual sustenance where those who could read, write, orate, and argue, taught those who could not. The motto “Each one, teach one” also extended to prison guards, many of whom were less educated than their most famous charges.The second half of the tour takes visitors through dormitories with no privacy, an area dedicated to corporal punishment, and other inhospitable spaces. Unpleasant, but not unexpected. The scullery, with its displays of dietary ration cards and enamel plates inscribed with race-based nutritional requirements, brings the humility into focus.The final stop is the one everyone is really here for, the second guide (a former inmate) teases as he leads visitors through a block with identical cells save for the red bucket and enamel plate that single out Nelson Mandela’s home for more than a decade.“Just Don’t Forget, He Wasn’t Here Alone”—Guide and Former Prisoner“Science knows it doesn’t know everything. Otherwise it would stop.”—Dara Ó Briain, ComedianThe “science” underpinning subjugation of entire racial categories is fortunately getting some of the negative attention it deserves. In May 2025, Namibia commemorated its first national Remembrance Day to mark what is now recognized as the first genocide of the twentieth century—the killing of close to 100,000 Herero and Nama people by German colonizers in that country (previously South-West Africa) between 1904–08. “The remains of some of those who were killed were then shipped to Germany for now-discredited research attempting to prove the racial superiority of white Europeans. Many of the bones have now been repatriated,” according to the BBC.5Still, those atrocities committed more than a century ago would underpin the systematic segregation, humiliation, and dehumanization suffered by those who survived. They would justify a maximum security prison on an island reserved for non-whites who dared to challenge the system declaring them lesser humans.The plates in the scullery and the cave in the Lime Quarry tell a powerful story about the role of food and commensality, even when weaponized to weaken the spirit. And “Each one, teach one” reminds us of what we must continue to learn from each other and from the history in front of us.