Nelson Mandela - Long Walk To Freedom - Working at the sea

In his autobiography, A long walk to freedom, Nelson Mandela talks about his political struggle and anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. In 1962, a white led government in South Africa convicted him of sabotage and he was sentenced to a life imprisonment, most of which he served in a prison in Robben Island. His tasks in Robben Island involved hard labor at the quarry. So, one day, in 1972, when the prisoners were taken to the sea instead of the quarry, it had been a welcome change. In this excerpt from his autobiography, Nelson Mandela talks about his experience of working next to the sea. Other than the beautiful descriptions that we get to read in this excerpt, we also get a glance of Nelson Mandela's characteristic humour.

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One morning, instead of walking to the quarry, we were ordered into the back of a truck. It rumbled off in a new direction, and fifteen minutes later we were ordered to jump out. There in front of us, glinting in the morning light, we saw the ocean, the rocky shore, and in the distance, winking in the sunshine, the glass towers of Cape Town. Although it was surely an illusion, the city, with Table Mountain looming behind it, looked agonizingly close, as though one could almost reach out and grasp it.

The senior officer explained that we had been brought to the shore to collect seaweed. We were instructed to pick up the large pieces that had washed up on the beach, and wade out to collect weed attached to rocks or coral. The seaweed itself was long and slimy and brownish-green in colour. Sometimes the pieces were six to eight feet in length and thirty pounds in weight. After fishing out the seaweed from the shallows, we lined it up in rows on the beach. When it was dry, we loaded it into the back of the truck. We were told it was then shipped to Japan, where it was used as a fertilizer.

The work did not seem too taxing to us that day, but in the coming weeks and months we found it could be quite strenuous. But that hardly mattered because we had the pleasures and distraction of such a panoramic tableau: we watched ships trawling, stately oil tankers moving slowly across the horizon; we saw gulls spearing fish from the sea and seals cavorting on the waves; we laughed at the colony of penguins, which resembled a brigade of clumsy flat-footed soldiers; and we marvelled at the daily drama of the weather over Table Mountain, with its shifting canopy of clouds and sun.

In the summer the water felt wonderful, but in the winter the icy Benguela Current made wading out into the waves a torture. The rocks on and around the shore were jagged and we often cut and scraped out legs as we worked. But we preferred the sea to the quarry, although we never spent more than a few days there at a time.

The ocean proved to be a treasure chest. I found beautiful pieces of coral and elaborate shells, which I sometimes brought back to my cell. Once someone discovered a bottle of wine stuck in sand that was still corked. I am told it tasted like vinegar.

The atmosphere at the shore was more relaxed than at the quarry. We also relished the seaside because we ate extremely well there. Each morning when we went to the shore, we would take a large drum of fresh water. Later we would bring along a second drum, which we would use to make a kind of Robben Island seafood stew. For our stew we would pick up clams and mussels. We also caught crayfish, whcih hid in the crevices of rocks. Capturing a crayfish was tricky; one had to grab it firmly between its head and tail or it would wriggle free.

We would take our catch and pile it into the second drum. Wilton Mkwayi, the chef among us, would concoct the stew. When it was ready, the warders would join us and we would all sit down on the beach and have a kind of picnic lunch. In 1973, in a smuggled newspaper, we read about the wedding of Princess Anne and Mark Phillips, and the story detailed in the bridal luncheon of rare and delicate dishes. The menu included mussels, crayfish and abalone, which made us laugh; we were dining on such delicacies every day.

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