Key Dingake – a Judge raised by Robben Island ghosts

Justice Key Dingake was barely out of his nappies when his elder brother, Michael “Mike” Dingake, was sentenced to 15 years in prison for his part in the anti-Apartheid struggle. When the Robben Island prison doors clanked behind Mike, about two thousand Kilometers away in Bobonong, a toddling Justice Dingake traded the rails of his baby cot for invisible prison bars, both brothers serving time, in different ways.

Though he never saw the inside of a prison cell, Justice Dingake, like many relatives of political prisoners, bore what is now known as “secondary prisonization” – a psychological burden shared by family members of the incarcerated. We are huddled around a corner table, over cups of coffee inside Café Dijo, as Justice Dingake recounts stories of how his childhood was shaped by memories of a brother who paid the price for daring to dream of freedom and a father who feared history repeating itself.