Resistance to ensure one's survival and create as meaningful a life as possible were ends in themselves and preconditions for continuing and strengthening antiapartheid politics. How Robben Islanders maintained and developed antiapartheid politics in prison is the concern of this and the following chapter. Imprisoning political activists was intended not only to silence and intimidate individual political actors but also to completely extinguish their political movements and organizations, most of which were already banned. Therefore, resistance meant keeping the liberation movements alive in prison with a view to furthering their work both on Robben Island and upon the release of prisoners.

Perhaps paradoxically, the survival and growth of individual organizations required at least a minimum level of cooperation between and among rival organizations. Both inter- and intraorganizational life assumed a social order structured in accordance with particular norms and institutional arrangements.