I have just returned from Russia, where history is still treated with weight and reverence. From there, I turned on my television to watch what was meant to be a historic Robben Island reunion of ex-political prisoners. Instead of a moment of collective remembrance, I saw Gayton McKenzie using Robben Island as a stage for himself and his community, while the true custodians of that history — overwhelmingly Black Africans — were diminished, excluded, or stranded.

Do the Math

The Wall of Remembrance now carries 2,717 names of ex-political prisoners. Most of those names belong to Black Africans. Of the 464 still alive, only 336 were awarded medals. Why not all? Who made those choices? Who decided whose sacrifices counted and whose did not?

The Island’s prison population was overwhelmingly African — schoolchildren from Soweto, youth from Sharpeville, young men and women dragged out of villages and townships and locked away for resisting apartheid in its daily brutality. The number of coloured comrades on the Island was far smaller. Their sacrifice is not to be dismissed — every life and every struggle mattered — but proportion matters. When the cameras and the programme tilt the balance away from the African majority to centre Gayton and his community, it distorts the historical truth. It reshapes memory into political capital.

The Ceremony

The speeches were polished. Statues of Mandela, Sobukwe, Toivo ya Toivo, and others were unveiled. The wall of names was dignified. On paper, it looked like honour. On the screen, it felt staged. Gayton spoke about heroes who “dreamt us into existence on the hard pillows of Robben Island.” Fine words. But when survivors are left stranded at airports or quietly cut from the invitation list, those words collapse into performance.

I was fifteen when I was first arrested. I spent my youth on Robben Island. I know the texture of that life. I know who filled those cells, who carried the beatings, who returned to their families broken. It was overwhelmingly African. What I saw on television was a ceremony that concealed that truth.

And it is not the first time African truth has been silenced on that Island. We all remember how Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe, one of our towering leaders, was deliberately kept apart, his voice forbidden, his very presence hidden from the collective. What Gayton McKenzie and his organisers did on 27 September felt like a repetition of that logic — once again Africans being written out of their own story, this time by our own ministers.

Commercialised Memory

This betrayal has been growing for years. Millions have been raised in the name of Robben Island, yet very little ever reached the ex-prisoners or their families. Remember the Sexwale millions? They never made their way down. The Island has become an economy of plaques, speeches, and tourist buses, while comrades live and die in poverty.

I have always fought against this. Through my film Umgidi (The Celebration), I insisted that memory must be kept alive in our rituals, in our bodies, in our communities. I went further: I brought comrades from across South Africa together with #FeesMustFall students in a symposium on memory, struggle, and the Black condition. That was no staged commemoration — it was a living archive. Generations sat together, speaking across time, reminding each other that the struggle is not locked in the past but moves forward through our children and their children. That is how Robben Island should be remembered.

The Exclusion

Hundreds of comrades who should have been there this week were excluded. Flights were bungled. Invitations went missing. Even members of the organising committee admitted that “the treatment of the founding subjects — the human beings, the ex-political prisoners — is a bitter pill to swallow.” That bitter pill was visible on screen in the gaps, the absences, the silences.

A Lament

This was supposed to be a reunion. Instead, it became a performance. It was McKenzie at the centre, not the collective. It was coloured pride given prominence while African sacrifice was pushed to the edges. That imbalance matters — because it repeats a long history of erasure where Africans carried the heaviest load and yet remain the easiest to silence.

Robben Island belongs to those who endured it and to the generations of Africans who must inherit the truth of it. It does not belong to ministers or consultants who treat it as a platform.

I came back from Russia reminded of how fragile memory is. Watching this ceremony, I saw how quickly it can be stolen. The statues may stand and the speeches may be archived, but Africans know who filled those cells. Africans know who carried that struggle. No performance will change that.

What I saw on television was not a reunion. It was a hijacking.

* Sipho Singiswa is a political analyst, filmmaker and Native rights activist. A 1976 student leader and former Robben Island prisoner, he has rejected the post-apartheid elite project and continues to organise around land and economic justice and the liberation of the African majority.

** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media. 

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