{"id":95783,"date":"2023-03-13T16:07:00","date_gmt":"2023-03-13T20:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=95783"},"modified":"2023-03-17T14:38:38","modified_gmt":"2023-03-17T18:38:38","slug":"robben-island-mandela","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/robben-island-mandela\/","title":{"rendered":"Robben Island: Mandela&#8217;s First 18 Years in Prison"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>What was prison like for Nelson Mandela? Why didn&#8217;t he try to escape?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Nelson Mandela spent a total of 27 years in three prisons. He endured the worst 18 of those years, from 1964 to 1982, in Robben Island Prison. He writes about the experience in his autobiography, <em>Long Walk to Freedom<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Read more to learn about Robben Island, Mandela&#8217;s first prison.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-mandela-at-robben-island\">Mandela at Robben Island<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>For the first 18 years, Mandela was held in a brutal facility called Robben Island Prison. In Robben Island, Mandela notes, most inmates had no beds nor plumbing, and they spent their days doing hard manual labor. Furthermore, prisoners were almost completely isolated from the outside world\u2014not even allowed visits from their families\u2014and they were frequently forced into solitary confinement for minor infractions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>(Shortform note: Today, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.smithsonianmag.com\/travel\/robben-island-a-monument-to-courage-62697703\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Robben Island is a museum<\/a> that offers tours of the old facility, including Mandela\u2019s tiny cell. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.smithsonianmag.com\/travel\/robben-island-a-monument-to-courage-62697703\/#:~:text=Many%20guides%20are%20themselves%20former%20prisoners%2C%20and%20they%20speak%20openly%20about%20their%20lives%20inside%20one%20of%20the%20world%E2%80%99s%20most%20notorious%20gulags.\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Many of the tour guides are former prisoners<\/a>\u2014they tell stories of how Mandela, Sisulu, and others kept the prisoners\u2019 spirits up, educated them, and helped them survive these harsh conditions of imprisonment.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>While enduring these harsh conditions, Mandela had to stay alert for attempts on his life.<\/strong> For example, a prison warden once offered to help him escape, but Mandela refused. He later learned that the warden was a plant from the Bureau of State Security, and he would have made sure that Mandela died during the \u201cescape attempt.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>(Shortform note: While this attempt on Mandela\u2019s life may seem shocking, assassination attempts are <a href=\"https:\/\/warontherocks.com\/2022\/08\/the-accelerating-threat-of-the-political-assassination\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">a common tactic<\/a> for political extremists of all kinds. The goal is to eliminate \u201chigh-value targets,\u201d important political figures whose death will (theoretically) <a href=\"https:\/\/warontherocks.com\/2022\/08\/the-accelerating-threat-of-the-political-assassination\/#:~:text=The%20emerging%20trend%20is%20due%20in%20no%20small%20part%20to%20the%20reemergence%20of%20so%2Dcalled%20%E2%80%9Caccelerationism%E2%80%9D%20as%20a%20distinct%20violent%20extremist%20strategy.\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">destabilize the current government<\/a> or <a href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/list-of-people-putin-is-suspected-of-assassinating-2016-3\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">weaken and frighten the opposition<\/a>.)&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-prisoner-protests-at-robben-island\">Prisoner Protests at Robben Island<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Mandela notes that, at Robben Island, the prisoners engaged in numerous protests against the prison\u2019s inhumane conditions and practices. Most commonly, they went on hunger strikes. However, those strikes were frequently unsuccessful because they only worked if word about the protest spread outside the prison\u2014otherwise, the inmates would simply starve themselves to death while the guards and wardens watched.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>(Shortform note: Hunger strikes are effective in large part because <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rferl.org\/a\/hunger-strikes-russia\/31266830.html#:~:text=For%20example%2C%20it,for%20that%20cause.\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">they reflect poorly on the authorities<\/a>. A government that lets people starve themselves to death instead of addressing their concerns is likely to face backlash from its citizens and, possibly, from the rest of the world as well. Furthermore, there\u2019s a chance that dead hunger strikers could become martyrs, bringing more attention and more people to their causes. To avoid these problems, it\u2019s often better for authorities to give in to the hunger striker\u2019s demands or at least to start negotiating with them.)&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Mandela says that he advocated for more disruptive forms of protest, such as refusing to work or refusing to clean. However, he was often outvoted, and he always supported the group\u2019s decisions once they were made.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-table\"><table><tbody><tr><td><strong>Effective Protests Must Be Disruptive<\/strong><br><br>While Mandela\u2019s comrades resisted his calls for more disruptive protests, he was arguably right to suggest them. Experts say that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wupr.org\/2016\/11\/01\/want-to-have-an-effective-protest-disrupt-expert-says\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">protests <em>do <\/em>need to be disruptive<\/a> to be effective; they need to upset people\u2019s routines and somehow force them to pay attention.<br><br>What qualifies as a \u201cdisruptive\u201d protest has changed over time. During the US <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/black-power-and-civil-rights-movement\/\">Civil Rights Movement<\/a>, for example, peaceful marches were uncommon enough\u2014and therefore attracted enough attention\u2014that they got people talking about civil rights issues. Today, however, such marches and demonstrations are routine; therefore, protestors are engaging in new tactics such as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wupr.org\/2016\/11\/01\/want-to-have-an-effective-protest-disrupt-expert-says\/#:~:text=There%E2%80%99s%20WikiLeaks%2C%20the%20organization%20with%20slogan%20%E2%80%9CWe%20open%20governments%2C%E2%80%9D%20that%20publicizes%20secret%20information%20and%20news%20leaks%20about%20governments%20and%20politicians%2C\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">revealing private information about politicians<\/a> or <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wupr.org\/2016\/11\/01\/want-to-have-an-effective-protest-disrupt-expert-says\/#:~:text=Or%20a%20collective%20of%20students%20camping%20outside%20a%20president%E2%80%99s%20office%20and%20preventing%20them%20from%20going%20about%20their%20lives.%20That%2C%20too%2C%20would%20be%20more%20effective.\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">interfering with an administrator\u2019s daily life<\/a>.&nbsp;<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What was prison like for Nelson Mandela? Why didn&#8217;t he try to escape? Nelson Mandela spent a total of 27 years in three prisons. He endured the worst 18 of those years, from 1964 to 1982, in Robben Island Prison. He writes about the experience in his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom. Read more to learn about Robben Island, Mandela&#8217;s first prison.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":95781,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,33],"tags":[940],"class_list":["post-95783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history","category-people","tag-long-walk-to-freedom","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.3 (Yoast SEO v24.3) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Robben Island: Mandela&#039;s First 18 Years in Prison - Shortform Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in three prisons. He endured the worst 18 of those years in Robben Island Prison. 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