But it was not all gloom and doom in the prison. As the saying goes, ‘Every cloud has a silver lining’. And what was interesting and unique despite the trials of Robben Island is that we met people from many different parts of South Africa. Remember now, this is apartheid South Africa and, for black people, the pass reigns supreme. Among other restrictions, this meant that black people did not have the right to mobility – they could not move around the country at will, so there was little opportunity for meeting people from other areas of the country.

The PAC prisoners had continued their dominance in numbers until around 1967. Around that time, Umkhonto weSizwe, The Spear of the Nation (the armed wing of the ANC), accelerated the armed guerrilla campaign within South Africa. Consequently, the ANC numbers began to swell the ranks on the island. Toward the middle of 1967 hundreds more ANC cadres arrived and the ANC ended up outnumbering all political parties, including the PAC. Between 1964 and 1967, there was a huge contingent of ANC and PAC cadres from the Eastern Cape: Port Elizabeth and East London. The older, more seasoned politicians were mostly ANC converts, while the younger, more radical chaps, were PAC adherents.

It was those swoops of the 1960s that created a political void, promptly filled in the 1970s by the entry, on national stage, of Steven Bantu Biko, the founder of the Black Conscious Movement (BCM).

While we were languishing in prison, the BCM came to prominence in South Africa's resistance struggle which culminated in the police massacre of hundreds of school children in 1976.

Among the newer arrivals there was a young man, Vuyani Bobotyane, who I also mentored over the years and a strong friendship developed between us. Vuyani was from East London, younger, but had not had the privilege of a high school education and he was quite thirsty for knowledge and willing to learn. He helped me understand the isiXhosa idioms in a different way and so I took my time to assist him to learn to speak and write a bit of Sesotho and English. Later, he could write letters back home, and converse eloquently in English and Sesotho.