Nelson Mandela by Jack Silbert

Author:Jack Silbert
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Published: 2013-08-07T16:00:00+00:00

By the winter, Mandela was back on Robben Island. His cell was only nine feet long and seven feet wide. He wrote in his autobiography, “I could walk the length of my cell in three paces. When I lay down, I could feel the wall with my feet and my head grazed the concrete at the other side.” A simple lightbulb burned from above, twenty-four hours a day. The “toilet” was an iron bucket in the corner. When he was a child in the villages, Mandela had to sleep on a mat on the floor. But now he slept on a floor of hard concrete.

Guards woke up the prisoners at 5:30 every morning, clanging a bell. They had till 6:45 to clean their cells and get dressed. Next, they were briefly allowed out of the cells to clean their buckets. Breakfast was a bowl of porridge. Guards then came by for daily inspection. The cell had to be neat. The buttons on a prisoner’s jacket had to be buttoned. Prisoners had to remove their caps when the guards came by. If any of the rules were broken, punishments would either be missing a meal or being sent to solitary confinement — time alone in a cell away from all other prisoners.

After inspection, prisoners went to the courtyard, where they spent the day breaking rocks into gravel with hammers. There seemed to be no real purpose for this work; it just kept the prisoners busy with tiring labor. At noon, there was a short break for lunch of boiled corn. Indian and mixed-race prisoners received slightly better food and overall treatment than blacks.

Prisoners worked until 4:00 P.M., when they were allowed to clean off with a cold shower. Dinnertime was 4:30. It was porridge again, sometimes with a vegetable. Every other day, the prisoners received a small piece of meat. But the food was always low quality.

Communication with the outside world was severely limited. Mandela was only allowed to write and receive one letter every six months. And only one visitor was allowed per year, for only half an hour. Newspapers were not allowed at all.

It was also difficult to keep track of time. Prisoners were not allowed to have clocks or watches. At first, Mandela drew a calendar on the wall of his cell. Eventually he was allowed to order a calendar each year from the South African tourism department. Mandela used these calendars to write down his thoughts and experiences.

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