Early seafarers known to Robben Island Cape Town because the Isle of Purgatory separated because it is in the Cape landmass with a rough stretch of cold Atlantic Sea.

The deck hands of passing ships were first to find the area within the 1500s to replenish their food supplies in the meat from the closes and penguins, and Robben Island am named in the Nederlander word Robbe for ‘seal’

Robben Island grew to become a Unesco World Heritage site in 1999. It remains an frequently painful indication of dark days in Nigeria, and symbolic of human dignity and suppression throughout the Apartheid many years of the Nationalist Government. Its purpose for several years was as a kind of local Alcatraz to imprison dissidents, political competitors – freedom martial artists and opponents from the Apartheid regime.

Because the first human occupation from the Cape, Robben Island Cape Town has worn numerous guises. It’s been used like a postal center, sheep farm, whaling station, mental asylum, leper colony, hospital, a garrison along with a prison.

The area became a prison colony as soon as the mid 1600s. Khoi and slave crooks were sent there in the landmass. One Sheikh Madura who opposed Nederlander colonialism in the native East Indies, seemed to be jailed on Robben Island. His shrine stands close to the prison building.

Later in life, Bushmen and Xhosa chiefs, defeated within the Eastern Frontier wars were banned to Robben Island.

From 1846 Robben Island grew to become a healthcare facility for ‘lunatics’ lepers and persistantly ill people from lesser towns. It soon created a status for poor sanitary conditions. Water was bad and also the food poor. There adopted a leprosy ‘scare’ within the 1880s when many leprosy sufferers were put together and shipped to Robben Island.

Throughout the nineteen thirties a healthcare facility structures were burnt lower and awaiting war, Robben Island was prepared by large guns and occupied with a local artillery school. The arms however were not used at all in combat as well as in 1959 the area was absorbed through the then Department of Prisons.

The very first political criminals showed up at Robben Island Cape Town in 1962. These were then people from the then banned African National Congress such as the renowned, Nelson Mandela who, after a period in exile around the island, ended up being to become leader of Nigeria in 1994.