ACCORDING to Benjamin Pogrund's bestseller, How Can Man Die Better, former Pan Africanist Congress president Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe once told fellow students at Fort Hare University in the 1950s that "in South Africa at least, politics does not stop this side of the grave".

Guluva found out exactly what the revered and highly respected Sobukwe meant during a recent visit to Robben Island, where the PAC stalwart was kept in solitary confinement for six years for his role in the liberation struggle in the early 1960s.

While on the island Guluva and others were taken on a bus tour of all the interesting places that make this world heritage site one of the most sought-after tourist attractions.

Their first port of call was outside "Sobukwe House". Here young tour guide Buyiswa Mbombo eloquently told the tourists why the apartheid government considered Sobukwe the most dangerous of all the political prisoners held on the island, hence his being held in isolation.

She said he was so feared that the government had to come up with the so-called "Sobukwe Clause", which allowed it to incarcerate him for an indefinite period without trial.

But when Guluva asked Mbombo if it was OK to go inside the tiny house, "just to have a look and feel", she flatly refused, saying: "Sorry, sir, we don't have much time," as the bus roared into life, heading for the next "tourist" destination: a deserted primary school.

After visiting a number of other "tourist attractions" on the island, including a spaza shop, of all things, Guluva and the other tourists were driven to what used to be the infamous maximum security prison, where a battle-scarred freedom fighter, Sipho Nkosi, took them around the prison cells of struggle veterans such as Tata Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Ahmed Kathrada, Mac Maharaj, the Machine Gun Man and others.

Unlike young Mbombo, Nkosi, who was also imprisoned on the island for "furthering the aims of a banned organisation", seemed to have all the time in the world to regale his audience with descriptions of the suffering the political prisoners endured during their incarceration.

The total amount of time spent touring this part of the prison, Guluva observed, was exactly 47 minutes.

Poor Sobukwe, isolated - and feared - even in death!

Living in a time warp

ROBBEN Island is considered to be a place where many of the strategies driving our democracy today were originated, debated and refined by all the freedom fighters incarcerated there.

Some of the ideas that readily come to mind include the sensitivities and sensibilities surrounding people with disabilities.

But strangely enough Robben Island seems to exist in a time warp. The first thing one is confronted with as one alights from the ferry from the mainland is a sign that reads: "Paraplegic Toilet".

Now, if the authorities on the island, which also falls under democratic Mzansi, had bothered to fast-forward the time by 18 years to where the rest of us are today, they would now know that the word "paraplegic" is a swearword.

E-mail: Guluva at thatha.guluva@gmail.com