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

Prison

A prison is a place in which people are physically confined and, usually, deprived of a range of personal freedoms. Imprisonment or incarceration is a legal penalty that may be imposed by the state for the commission of a crime...

 between Paarl

Paarl

Paarl is a town with 191,013 inhabitants in the Western Cape province of South Africa. Its the third oldest European settlement in the Republic of South Africa and the largest town in the Cape Winelands. Due to the growth of the Mbekweni township, it is now a de facto urban unit with Wellington...

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

Western Cape

The Western Cape is a province in the south west of South Africa. The capital is Cape Town. Prior to 1994, the region that now forms the Western Cape was part of the much larger Cape Province...

 of South Africa

South Africa

The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...

. The prison is famous for being the prison where Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999, and was the first South African president to be elected in a fully representative democratic election. Before his presidency, Mandela was an anti-apartheid activist, and the leader of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing...

 spent the last three of the 27 years he spent in prison for campaigning against apartheid.

In 1984 Mandela was transferred from the maximum security prison on Robben Island

Robben Island

Robben Island is an island in Table Bay, 6.9 km west of the coast of Bloubergstrand, Cape Town, South Africa. The name is Dutch for "seal island". Robben Island is roughly oval in shape, 3.3 km long north-south, and 1.9 km wide, with an area of 5.07 km². It is flat and only a...

, a small island in Table Bay

Table Bay

Table Bay is a natural bay on the Atlantic Ocean overlooked by Cape Town and is at the northern end of the Cape Peninsula, which stretches south to the Cape of Good Hope. It was named because it is dominated by the flat-topped Table Mountain.Bartolomeu Dias was the first European to explore this...

, to Pollsmoor Prison

Pollsmoor Prison

Pollsmoor Prison, officially, Pollsmoor Maximum Security Prison is a prison in the Cape Town suburb of Tokai in South Africa. Nelson Mandela was the most famous inmate of the prison...

 in Tokai, Cape Town

Tokai, Cape Town

Tokai, a large residential suburb of Cape Town, South Africa, is situated on the foothills of the Constantiaberg, and is bordered by, Steenberg and Kirstenhof to the South, Bergvliet to the East, Constantia to the North and the SAFCOL pine tree plantations against the mountain to the...

. From there, Mandela was moved to the then Victor Verster prison in 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

Political prisoner

According to the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, a political prisoner is ‘someone who is in prison because they have opposed or criticized the government of their own country’....

s. Mandela served another three years at Victor Verster until his release on 11 February 1990. On the day of his release, news agencies from all over the world surrounded the prison, gaining the prison much notoriety worldwide.

There is a statue of Mandela just outside the prison gates. (See Statues of Nelson Mandela).

External links

• http://www.info.gov.za/speeches/2005/05082513451003.htm
• http://www.flickr.com/photo_exif.gne?id=2244702976
• http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/history/zuma/2004/jz1207.html
• http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/show.asp?type=sp&include=former_deputy/sp/2004/sp1207.htm
• http://www.polity.org.za/article.php?a_id=56446