Bittersweet return to Robben Island

Time stands still on Robben Island. Seconds become minutes, minutes stretch into hours, and the weight of history settles into the limestone walls that once confined dreamers of a different, democratic South Africa. As I sat in the museum’s ferry docking station, about to embark on my third visit, my eyes could not miss the power of words from the island’s most famous political prisoner Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela etched on the wall: “It is said that no one truly knows a nation u