There are plans to take Robben Island to the world through a video game, website and mobile reconstruction of Nelson Mandela’s prison cell, writes David Smith.
The Mandela 27 project, launched at Cape Town’s gateway to Robben Island on Thursday, aims to draw on cultural links between South Africa and Europe during the racial apartheid era, such as the Rock against Racism campaign in Britain and Nelson Mandela’s 70th birthday concert at Wembley Stadium.
The parallel demise of communism in East Europe and white minority rule in South Africa in the late 1980s and early 1990s will be highlighted.
For decades it was a bleak enigma at the southern tip of Africa, shrouded in such secrecy that the world was denied any photographs of its most famous inmate, Nelson Mandela.
Now there are plans to take Robben Island to the world through a video game, a website and even a mobile reconstruction of the prison cell where the struggle hero languished for 18 of his 27 years behind bars
“The fall of the Berlin wall didn’t seem to be related to the release of political prisoners in South Africa,” said Roger Friedman, a spokesperson for the project, “but if you take a step back, the connections are very clear.”
The initiative comes 19 years after the end of apartheid and as a “born free” generation deals with 21st century concerns rather than looking back. Its loyalty to Mandela’s party of liberation, the African National Congress, is far from guaranteed.
Full storyvia Mail & Guardian
