Robben Island is not a place to sleep

I read the headline twice because I thought I had misunderstood it. Former prison guard houses on Robben Island may be converted into tourist accommodation. At first, I assumed it was satire.

It felt too tone-deaf to be real. But we are well past April Fool’s Day and the proposal is exactly what it sounds like. The Robben Island Museum has confirmed that one of the former guard homes has been restored as a pilot project.

There are around 100 of these houses on the island. The broader idea is to repurpose them into an accommodation offering, although the timelines remain unclear. And just like that, a place synonymous with pain, resistance, suffering and sacrifice is being reframed as somewhere you can … check in.

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This is not just another underutilised state asset that needs to “work harder”. It is a Unesco World Heritage Site. It is where Nelson Mandela spent 18 years of his imprisonment.

It is where countless anti-apartheid activists were broken down physically and psychologically for daring to imagine a free South Africa. You do not separate that history from the land itself. The space isthe story.

When we start talking about turning prison guard houses into short-stay rentals, we are not just talking about property. We are talking about memory, dignity and about what we choose to preserve and how.

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