Robben Island and Prisoner Resistance to Apartheid

The key source of primary research material for this work is interviews with former Robben Island prisoners, as well as a more limited selection of interviews with members of the then government and Prisons Service and various supporters of the political prisoners, including human rights activists. In total, ninety people were interviewed by myself directly for this project, mostly in individual interviews, although some were in group interviews. Interviews lasted between one and eight hours and were conducted over one to three sessions. Unless interview respondents requested otherwise, interviews were taped and then transcribed or summarized.

Respondents were chosen to cover as broad a range of former prisoners as possible, in terms of organization, age, region, economic position, and former and current political role. Based on when they arrived at Robben Island, the organizational affiliations of the seventy-one former prisoners who were interviewed were as follows: one common law prisoner, one member of APDUSA, one member of the Liberal Party, twelve members of the BCM, seventeen members of the PAC, thirty-four members of the ANC, and three people whose affiliations were probably ANC although this is not known for certain. Given that the ANC was in the majority in the prison for most of the period between (approximately) 1970 and 1991, the greater number of ANC respondents is appropriate. (This combination was, nevertheless, partly coincidental given the number of ways interviewees were selected.