Summary

In Part Eight: Robben Island: The Dark Years, Mandela describes his life at Robben Island, where he spent 18 years. The prisoners are assigned manual labor: moving a load of stones, dumped fresh every morning, from the entrance to the prison courtyard to the center of the yard. Then they were made to crush the stones into gravel. Mandela notes that in 1964, two years after he had last been there, Robben Island has become “the harshest, most iron-fisted outpost in the South African penal system” (387). At Robben Island, there are no black warders and no white prisoners.

Mandela describes the daily routine in prison, and explains that political prisoners must first learn how to survive in the system. He resolves to participate in the struggle as best he can, even though is now in prison. Mandela raises his first...