Column: Lessons of the Makana League
John U. Bacon
A few weeks ago, I visited Cape Town, South Africa. It’s a famously beautiful city, right on the ocean – but that’s not what I took away from my trip.
The boat ride from Cape Town to Robben Island is just five miles, and takes only 30 minutes. But to the prisoners held there, starting in the 17th century, it might as well be on the dark side of the moon. Only a handful even tried to escape, and none of them made it – most notably Makana, a famed 19th century Xhosa leader, who drowned halfway to freedom.
Sixty years ago, when the Apartheid government rounded up resistance leaders in Pretoria and Port Elizabeth, Johannesburg and Capetown, it sent them to Robben Island. The plan was simple: cut off the snake’s head, and the body dies.
But the prisoners outwitted their captors. By putting the strongest resistors all in one place, the government gave its enemies their first chance to work together – and an ideal training ground for taking down the government when they left. [Full Story]