Drakenstein Correctional Centre (formerly Victor Verster Prison) is a low-security prison between

Paarl Paarl (; Afrikaans: ; derived from ''Parel'', meaning "pearl" in Dutch) is a town with 112,045 inhabitants in the Western Cape province of South Africa. It is the third-oldest city and European settlement in the Republic of South Africa (after ...

and Franschhoek, on the R301 road 5 km from the R45 Huguenot Road, in the valley of the Dwars River in the

Western Cape The Western Cape is a province of South Africa, situated on the south-western coast of the country. It is the fourth largest of the nine provinces with an area of , and the third most populous, with an estimated 7 million inhabitants in 202 ...

of South Africa. The prison is famous for being the location where

Nelson Mandela Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (; ; 18 July 1918 – 5 December 2013) was a South African anti-apartheid activist who served as the first president of South Africa from 1994 to 1999. He was the country's first black head of state and the ...

spent the last part of his imprisonment for campaigning against

apartheid Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was ...

. In 1982 Mandela was transferred from the maximum security prison on Robben Island, a small island in

Table Bay Table Bay (Afrikaans: ''Tafelbaai'') is a natural bay on the Atlantic Ocean overlooked by Cape Town (founded 1652 by Van Riebeeck) and is at the northern end of the Cape Peninsula, which stretches south to the Cape of Good Hope. It was named b ...

, to

Pollsmoor Prison Pollsmoor Prison, officially known as Pollsmoor Maximum Security Prison, is located in the Cape Town suburb of Tokai in South Africa. Pollsmoor is a maximum security penal facility that continues to hold some of South Africa's most dangerous c ...

in Tokai, Cape Town. From there, Mandela was moved to the then Victor Verster Prison on 9 December 1988, where he lived in a private house inside the prison compound. Victor Verster, a farm prison, was often used as a stepping stone for releasing lower-risk

political prisoner A political prisoner is someone imprisoned for their political activity. The political offense is not always the official reason for the prisoner's detention. There is no internationally recognized legal definition of the concept, although nu ...

s. Mandela served another 14 months at Victor Verster Prison until his release on 11 February 1990. On the day of his release, reporters from all over the world surrounded the prison, giving the prison worldwide publicity. The private house where Mandela lived has been declared a South African National Heritage Site, and a statue of Mandela stands just outside the prison gates.

Henri van Breda The Van Breda murders were the killings of three family members and serious injury of another on 27 January 2015 at a golf estate in Stellenbosch, Western Cape, South Africa. After a year and a half of investigations by the South African Pol ...

, who was found guilty in May 2018 of killing his parents and older brother and the attempted murder of his younger sister, is currently serving three life sentences in this facility.

References

External links

*https://web.archive.org/web/20051202130031/http://www.info.gov.za/speeches/2005/05082513451003.htm *https://www.flickr.com/photo_exif.gne?id=2244702976 *https://web.archive.org/web/20061013005837/http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/history/zuma/2004/jz1207.html

*http://www.polity.org.za/article.php?a_id=56446 Prisons in South Africa Drakenstein Buildings and structures in the Western Cape South African heritage sites Nelson Mandela {{prison-stub