In the deep blue of Cape Town’s Table Bay Harbour lies an abiding symbol of colonial tyranny, the infamous icon of segregation, the Alcatraz-style Maximum Security Prison of Robben Island.

Since the early 1600s, Robben Island (Dutch for “Seal Island”), 7.5 miles (12 km) from the mainland and encompassing some 1,420 acres (5.7 km²), has served as a site of desolate banishment, exile and isolation to leprosy sufferers, mentally ill patients and political dissidents.

The sight of freedom inspired inmates at Robben Island.

During South Africa’s apartheid era, political troublemakers and opponents of the regime were kept here. The apartheid system, which was based on racial segregation and supremacy of the white minority, officially ended with the first all-race democratic elections in 1994, when Nelson Mandela became the country’s first black president.

The most famous person in the struggle against the apartheid system, Mandela himself had been a political prisoner for 27 years. Much of this time was spent in a cell on Robben Island. In 1964 he was sentenced to life imprisonment for being a member of the then-banned African National Congress (ANC) and for acts of sabotage against the state. Mandela was released from jail in 1990.

The last political prisoners left the island in 1991 and the prison finally closed down. Today the island and prison are preserved as a museum whose guides are all former inmates. They provide valuable insight into the harsh treatment the former apartheid government employed to control rebels.

Cold reality sets in while thrashing through the choppy swells on the 40-minute ferry journey to the low-lying rocky outcropping, and watching the mainland shrink away. One can only imagine the realizations of former prisoners that there would be no escape from the foreboding loneliness that awaited them. No matter which way your political views swing, a visit to Robben Island is a deeply felt and emotional experience.

The island was proclaimed a World Heritage site in 1999, and guided tours run daily, on the hour, between 9 a.m. and 2 p.m., starting at the Mandela Gateway — the embarkation point at Cape Town’s Victoria & Alfred Waterfront, an old harbor complex transformed into a recreational resort and exclusive shopping center.

A tour of the island includes a bus journey to visit its oldest sites: the lepers’ graveyard and the small Church of the Good Shepherd, generally known as the leper’s church, built by the lepers themselves in 1864. We visited the lime quarry where those sentenced to hard labor cut blocks for those inside the prison to break into stones.

There’s the guard’s village, now home to the former prisoners-turned-guides, and nearby is a small cottage where Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe, the founder of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), passed his last days. The PAC was a liberation movement that transformed itself into a minor political party.

The former inmates accompanying each tour group give a first-hand account of what it was like to be incarcerated there. One such guide is Lionel Davis, who, in April 1964, was sentenced to six years on Robben Island, after being found guilty of conspiring to commit sabotage. Now Lionel lives on the island with his family, and is the chairperson of the Robben Island Village Association.