Google now offers an extensive online tour of Robben Island, in an initiative launched this week to commemorate Freedom Day on Monday.
Luke McKend, country director for Google SA, said in a blog post that Google teamed up with the Robben Island Museum and Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory to bring the story of this United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation World Heritage Site online "for the world to explore".
At the launch of the collaboration, former prisoner Ahmed Kathrada said there is "poetic justice" in children from around the world being able to use technology to visit the island. Kathrada said one of the most difficult things for him as a prisoner was not being able to see or interact with children for 20 years.
Sibongiseni Mkhize, Robben Island Museum CEO, said the museum is embracing technology to avoid becoming "irrelevant". "We are using technology to enhance the story of the island."
The virtual tour takes the viewer from the outside of the prison, to the office where mail was censored, then onto the hospital wing, courtyard, kitchen, quarries and bedrooms. The tour uses a combination of Google's Street View technology, videos of a tour guide and original still pictures. It takes less than half an hour to complete, but viewers are free to go at their own pace.
Tour guide, Vusumzi Mcongo, who was a prisoner in the 1980s, walks the viewer through the prison, adding interesting bits of information and his own memories of the place.
Other elements to the tour include interviews with former political prisoners such as Kathrada, Kgalema Motlanthe and Tokyo Sexwale, as well as 91 pictures of items found within the museum.
Robben Island is the latest addition to the Google Cultural Institute documentaries on historical sites, with Auschwitz and the Normandy Invasion site being available to view.
The official Robben Island Museum Web site does offer its own virtual tour of the island, but it is not as in-depth as Google's version.
It costs between R150 and R280 to visit the museum for a standard tour of three-and-a-half hours, including a ferry to and from the V&A Waterfront in Cape Town.
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