Black and White All Over

If you ask safari guides here in East Africa whether a zebra is black with white stripes or white with black stripes, you’ll get differing responses and passionate opinions.

One argument is that the base color is black, because the nose and tip of the tail are black, as are zebra embryos, apparently.

On the other hand, if you look at a Grevy’s or mountain zebra (two of the three types you find here in Kenya) the black stripes don’t make it all the way down to the belly, which is white. This supports the argument that the animal is white with black stripes.

Either argument can be convincing. But like a Rorschach inkblot, whether we see black on white or white on black may say more about our own perspectives – and prejudices – than anything else.

I am writing this as the world mourns the passing of Nelson Mandela – a black man, imprisoned by whites, for believing in dignity and freedom for all. A man who, despite the indignities he suffered, created, in the words of his friend and fellow Robben Island prison inmate, Andrew Mlangeni, “hope when there was none.”

I never got to see Mandela in person. But I did get the chance to visit Robben Island a few months back, when I accompanied Britt on a trip to South Africa. It’s where Nelson Mandela spent 18 of his 27 years of captivity.

Robben Island sits about 7 kilometers from Cape Town harbor. It’s small and flat and pretty desolate. The name comes from the Dutch word for seals.  Over the centuries it has been used to house outcasts, lepers, and the mentally ill. During WWII, it was a military base. During the apartheid years, it served as a maximum security prison for hardened criminals and for political prisoners (kept on different parts of the island). Like everything else, it was segregated.

Today, Robben Island is a national monument, museum, and UNESCO heritage site. There are about 100 inhabitants, living in the village that previously housed prison guards and administrators.

Visiting Robben Island is an incredibly moving experience.

Located near the southern-most tip of the African continent, it draws visitors from around the world. On the day I was there, my tour companions were wearing braids and baseball caps and turbans and headscarves. They spoke lots of different languages but were united in awe and admiration.

After a 30-minute ferry ride and quick bus tour past some of the island’s sites –including the rock quarry where prisoners did hard labor – we were taken for a tour of the prison. All of the guides are themselves former prisoners. Our tour guide was a man arrested at the age of 19 for being part of a student anti-apartheid group. He walked us through the different prison blocks, including the ones where people like Mandela were confined to individual cells with a thin mattress on the floor, no contact with other inmates, and a bucket for a toilet.

Our tour guide was not one of the more famous names to come out of Robben Island. But his speech was as eloquent and impressive. Here was a man used and abused by a system both cruel and unjust, who, several times a day, walks patiently past his old cell and speaks of the importance of peace and reconciliation. While others booed during the Mandela memorial service out of frustration with their current president, this South African talks passionately about the power and potential of moving his country forward.

Back on the mainland, I got a chance to visit the University of Cape Town with a friend. Like campuses worldwide, it was abuzz with youthful energy and activity. It was also refreshingly diverse and integrated, holding the promise of the rainbow nation, a term coined by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and described by Nelson Mandela this way:

"Each of us is as intimately attached to the soil of this beautiful country, as are the famous jacaranda trees of Pretoria and the mimosa trees of the bushveld - a rainbow nation at peace with itself and the world."

Prison cell, Robben Island