Perhaps someone such as former MLS deputy commissioner Ivan Gazidis could truly understand the significance and symbolism of the FIFA Executive Committee holding a meeting on this island that has nothing but a notorious history.
His father, Costa, was a political prisoner in this country for two years in the 1960s. While Costa wasn't imprisoned on Robben Island -- that was reserved for black and colored political prisoners -- he still received a harsh taste of South Africa's apartheid era.
Ivan Gazidis, CEO of Arsenal in the English Premier League, gave a thumb's up supporting FIFA's idea, but hoped that the world governing body of soccer and World Cup officials would go further than just having a meeting.
"I am delighted FIFA decided to hold the World Cup in South Africa," he said. "It was the right decision to recognize an often-ignored continent. Holding its executive committee meeting on Robben Island has great symbolism of course, but the real challenge for FIFA and for South Africa will be to ensure that the World Cup leaves a lasting legacy for the country and in particular for its poorest and most disadvantaged citizens."
Not surprisingly, like his father, Ivan was thinking of the people.
Costa hated apartheid. When he attended medical school at Wits University, there were severe restrictions on blacks and he walked out when blacks weren't allowed to partake in a dissection of a white human cadaver. He attended a meeting of the African National Congress. An informant notified police who was there and Costa was arrested, tried and handed a two-year prison sentence despite having a young, pregnant wife. The ANC, the ruling party in Africa today, was considered a terrorist organization.
"My father stood out like a sore thumb," Gazidis said by telephone from London. "Not very many white members of the ANC. My mother had a similar sort of mind.
"The interesting thing I admire about my parents is that those people were able to do that with moral clarity even though it was against their interests. To recognize the evil of it, it was extremely difficult. I have admiration for people who not only recognized it was wrong, but took action against it."
Gazidis' father served six months in solitary confinement. The one thing that preserved his sanity was an alphabet code prisoners used to communicate by banging on the pipes.
Torture could come in many shapes and forms. For Costa Gazidis, it was psychological. When Ivan was born in 1964, prison authorities told his father that his baby had died during childbirth. It wasn't until later that Costa discovered the truth.
All things considered, Gazidis probably was fortunate. He was placed in a prison near where he lived in Johannesburg. Had he been black, he would not have been so lucky. He could have gone to South Africa's version of Alcatraz.
It is not a very big island -- 2 miles long by 1-1/2 miles wide. And while it is tantalizing close to Cape Town -- it is some 4 miles away in Table Bay and you can easily see the city and Table Mountain from the island -- it was not advisable to escape. The ocean's currents aren't conducive to swimming to shore and then there's the issue of sharks in the water.
Today, Robben Island is a museum, a reminder of what can happen when man is at his worst.
"This is more an historic day for the FIFA Executive Committee and for me," a proud FIFA president Sepp Blatter said Thursday afternoon, "because Robben Island has written a story of humanity and a very important one."
Or perhaps it was more inhumanity.
The conditions were horrendous. The prisoners were regularly beaten by the guards and punished for no reason. They worked long, arduous hours in a nearby quarry where they shattered rocks that built the various prison buildings. The food was slop for the most part. The prisoners slept on mats on the floor -- 40 men to a room -- and not in beds. And there was no heat or air circulation, so it was too cold in the winter and too hot in the summer.
The jailed political leaders, including Nelson Mandela, were kept in a separate area, away from the masses so they couldn't start any trouble. Mandela was forced to stay in a cell for 27 years in a small room that was not fit for any man, let alone the future president of the country.
This was the third time the FIFA president -- Blatter -- visited this island.
"I'm always impressed each time," he said. "Robben Island is linked to a story of revolution of young people in a political system where they had no access."
On Thursday, several prisoners who survived mind-numbing times on the island met with the media to again tell their story. Their story already had been well documented in a book and a movie by the same name, "More Than Just A Game."
Both works detailed how soccer helped the prisoners survive. They established a league, the Makona Football Association, which strictly followed FIFA rules. In 1989, FIFA made the MFA an honorary member. The men on the dais of the press conference -- Tokyo Sexwale, Anthony Suze, Sedick Isaacs, Lizo Sitoto and Mark Shinners -- either played on or served the teams in a off-field capacity.
After many efforts to convince the warden to play soccer failed, prison officials finally relented and allowed the men to play the beautiful game on Saturdays.
"We put rags together just to make a football," Sexwale said. "Anything we could find that was spherical."
Just playing soccer gave many prisoners jailed for years, some for life, hope and a place to rediscover their passion for something tangible. Because he was confined, Mandela did not participate in soccer. But another future leader did -- current South African president Jacob Zuma was a referee in the MFA.
Sexwale also is a member of the government, the current minister for human settlement. When he addressed several hundred media Thursday, Sexwale asked if there were any women media members in the audience.
"There was a time when there were no ladies here," he said. "All men. All black. All prisoners. It's not what fair play is about. We were freedom fighters. ... We were fighting for a democratic system."
Every prisoner had a number. Mandela's for example was 466/64, meaning he was the 466th inmate imprisoned in 1964.
"That person became the most celebrated person [here]," Sexwale said.
Sexwale wasn't there when the MFA started behind the likes of Suze and Isaacs, but he was at the end.
"It was my pleasure to close it down," he said. "We changed this place from a dungeon to a university. This place represents the triumph of the human spirit."
Now, Sexwale doesn't mind returning to Robben Island every once in a while to celebrate the biggest victory of his life -- winning over apartheid.
Michael Lewis covers soccer for the New York Daily News and is editor of BigAppleSoccer.com. He can be reached at SoccerWriter516@aol.com. Views and opinions expressed in this column are the author's, and not necessarily those of Major League Soccer or MLSnet.com.
