Early evening – the sun still up – but we had no watches and, on this foreign island, didn't know how to read the sky to estimate the time.

The officers exchanged a few formalities, and the bandittis handover was done – over. Armed warders herded us and, like sheep to market, loaded us on open-backed lorries. We then made our way to the prison reception, about a kilometre from the harbour.

The day seemed to stretch and stretch, endless – like my life seemed about to stretch in this place. The only difference was that the day was God ordained; my life, apartheid-government condemned.

The reality of abandonment – of being all alone – cut off from the rest of the world – seeped deeper and deeper as my eye took in that desolate arid patch of rock in the middle of the ocean. Nature had devised the perfect prison. No bars were needed here: the chances of escape were nonexistent. Most of us just paddled in water, how could we even attempt to swim across an ocean? Like nothing had shown me before, this place told me loud and clear we were truly consigned to damnation.

Robben Island is a small island, some 2km wide and perhaps 4km long, comprised largely of hard rock and sand. It lies anything between 12 to 15km from the Cape Town coast and is separated from the mainland by icy cold and choppy waves. Its name is said to be derived from ‘robbe’, the Dutch word for seals. Available evidence indicates that the island was established as a source of food for sailors and explorers during the early colonial times, when Bartholomew Dias and his ilk accidentally happened upon the shores of South Africa and decided it would be a convenient outpost. The island was also reported to be the last resting-place of sailors drowned at sea due to some unfortunate mishap or shipwreck. Later, it was lunatics, lepers and others suffering from incurable diseases that were banished to languish and die in isolation.

Later, the apartheid government declared the impregnable island a maximumsecurity prison – for non-white males only. No ships were allowed within a mile of the island's rocky shores because the prisoners there were considered the biggest threat to the State.