Our Robben Island tour guide, Benjamin, became committed to armed struggle when his pregnant girlfriend was shot through the mouth and killed during the countrywide uprisings against South Africa's apartheid government in 1976.

The uprising started on June 16 as a peaceful student demonstration against the apartheid government's introduction of Afrikaans as the language of instruction in schools.

Security forces and police, called in to monitor the protests, panicked when confronted with large numbers of students and opened fire, killing 23 protesters. The uprising spread, and hundreds were killed countrywide.

A day after the first protests, Benjamin's pregnant girlfriend became a victim.

A member of the African National Congress, Benjamin immediately left the country, going first to Angola and then to East Germany, where he received explosives training from Cuban military personnel.

Upon returning to South Africa, Benjamin and seven other operatives plotted to use a rocket-propelled grenade to blow up an oil tanker in Pretoria. Their mission accomplished, they were arrested on their way out of the city.

Benjamin was sentenced to 20 years in jail, arriving at Robben Island in 1980.

He spent 11 years on the island before he was part of the last group of political prisoners to be freed in 1991. The last common law prisoners were released five years later and Robben Island is now a museum and UNESCO world heritage site.

The seven-mile boat trip to Robben Island hinted at its inhospitable location. Small swells in the South Atlantic gave rise to larger and larger swells as we neared the island. With no land between it and the South Pole, conditions are often cold and stormy.

The island, flat and windswept, includes a small village where former warders who were resident on the island could mail a letter, purchase food, go to church. When the prison closed, some 43 children of warders were attending the island's school.

Robben Island was first used as a place of banishment for people who offended the political order in 1658 when indigenous Khoikhoi leader Autshumato became the first prisoner to be sent there.

The British used the five square kilometre island to isolate political opponents during the 19th century and later the island was used to house vagrants, prostitutes, and the chronically ill.

In the 1890s, lepers were sent to join the social outcasts on Robben Island; lunatics were removed in 1921, and lepers were found a new home in 1930.

The island was taken over by South Africa's Prisons Department in 1961.

The first prisoners endured forced hard labour in the island's stone quarry, breaking the rock to build the maximum security prison.

Among the political detainees were Robben's most famous prisoner Nelson Mandela, who arrived in 1963 as well as ANC leaders such as Mandela's political mentor, Walter Sisulu, and leaders of the Pan African Congress, including Robert Sobukwe, who was held in solitary confinement for nine years.

Benjamin led us through the former prison, holding court in front of a garden first planted by Mandela before taking us to where Mandela and others were held in cells measuring six by nine feet.

Mandela's cell has been staged as it would have been between his arrival in 1963 and 1973, when he was given a bed due to illness.

Like other prisoners, the future president of South Africa slept on a mat and was given four blankets in summer, and five in winter. He had a plate, a cup, and a bucket for use as a toilet. Prisoners spent 16 hours a day in their cells.

The cells feature "Cell Stories", prisoners' personal recollections printed and mounted on the walls of the cells where they were held. Some told of the beatings they suffered at the hands of warders, while other stories were more uplifting.

One young prisoner, Moses Masemola, forced to work in the stone quarry, told of being unable to push a heavy wheelbarrow full of stones across the sandy ground.

As punishment, guards buried him up to his neck and encouraged a fellow prisoner to relieve himself in the young prisoner's mouth.

Other times, prisoners were sodomised by other prisoners at the urging of guards.

The prisoners who did the deeds were part of a small group who were given leftover sandwiches and other favours by guards as a reward for assisting in their abuses.

Another prisoner, musician Gaby Magomola, asked the prison warden for permission to have a trumpet. His good standing as a prisoner confirmed, the trumpet duly arrived he was the first person allowed to keep a musical instrument.

Magomola is the author of the book, 'Robben Island to Wall Street', which chronicles his five years on Robben Island as well as his role as a businessman in the new South Africa.

Beatings were common for the prisoners forced to work in the stone quarry, or the lime quarry, where the bright sun reflecting off the lime affected many prisoners' eyesight.

Benjamin's demeanour brightened when he told us about the Makana Football League, a 30-team, three-division league that was set up in 1965.

Among the organisers and footballers involved were South Africa's future constitutional court judge, Dikgang Moseneke, and several ANC cabinet ministers, including the late national hero Steve Tshwete.

Inmates who secretly followed matches from the prison's isolation wing included Mandela, Sisulu and future president Thabo Mbeki's father, Govan Mbeki.

Mandela spent 18 years on Robben Island before being transferred to Pollsmoor Prison in Cape Town in 1982. It was from Pollsmoor that Mandela's negotiations with the leaders of the apartheid state apparatus began.

He was eventually released from Victor Verster Prison in Paarl, the wine region 35 miles north of Cape Town, in 1990.

Incredibly, Mandela had the same warder for his entire prison stay, a white Afrikaner named James Gregory, who was won over by Mandela and became convinced that the future president's political battle was a just one. Gregory was invited to Mandela's inauguration in 1994.

At the close of our tour of Robben Island, Benjamin was asked whether he found it difficult to work at a place where such pain had been inflicted upon him. "To live, one must eat and to eat, one must work," he said simply.

Thirty years after he first arrived on Robben Island, Benjamin remains a reluctant visitor.

Veteran World Cup observer Duncan Hall is reporting exclusively from South Africa for The Royal Gazette.