Rather than being identified by name, prisoners were issued with prison numbers by which they were, at first, always referred to and which they had to use in any correspondence. The first part of the number was based on how many prisoners had been admitted to a particular prison that year; the second part of the number listed the year. Nelson Mandela’s best-known prison number is 466/64. Years after his release, at a concert in Cape Town launching an HIV awareness campaign using his prison numbers, he said: ‘I was supposed to have been reduced to that number.’17
Mandela was on Robben Island twice, which meant that he was allocated two different prison numbers for that prison. During his twenty-seven years of incarceration, Mandela was held in four prisons after he was sentenced and was issued with six different prison numbers.
19476/62 |
Pretoria Local Prison: 7 November 1962–25 May 1963 |
191/63 |
Robben Island: 27 May 1963–12 June 1963 |
11657/63 |
Pretoria Local Prison: 12 June 1963–12 June 1964 |
466/64 |
Robben Island: 13 June 1964–31 March 1982 |
220/82 |
Pollsmoor Prison: 31 March 1982–12 August 1988 Tygerberg Hospital: 12 August 1988–31 August 1988 Constantiaberg MediClinic: 31 August 1988–7 December 1988 |
1335/88 |
Victor Verster Prison: 7 December 1988–11 February 1990 |