"I went for a long holiday for 27 years," Nelson Mandela once said of his years in prison.
It was another example of the dry, razor-sharp and often self-deprecating humour for which South Africa's first black president was famous.
The prison years ended in a cottage he had to himself in the garden of a jail near Cape Town then known as Victor Verster - with TV, radio, newspapers, a swimming pool and any visitors he wanted.
But he was still in prison. And the greatest number of years that he was in prison - 18 out of 27 - were spent on Robben Island, where the contrast could not have been greater.
Banishment
The notorious island, within sight of the city of Cape Town and Table Mountain, acquired its name from the seals that once populated it in multitudes - robben being the Dutch word for seal.
Its three centuries as a prison island and a place of banishment were punctuated by a period as a leper colony.
Nelson Mandela's former cell on Robben Island
A warder's first words when Nelson Mandela and his ANC comrades arrived were: "This is the Island. This is where you will die."
They faced a harsh regime in a new cell block constructed for political prisoners. Each had a single cell some seven foot square around a concrete courtyard, with a slop bucket. To start with, they were allowed no reading materials.
They crushed stones with a hammer to make gravel and were made to work in a blindingly bright quarry digging out the limestone.
Fellow prisoner Walter Sisulu spoke of a day Nelson Mandela's emerging leadership among the inmates was displayed in a rebellion over the quarry: "The prison authorities would rush us…'Hardloop!' That means run. One day they did it with us.
It was Nelson who said: 'Comrades let's be slower than ever.' It was clear therefore that the steps we were taking would make it impossible ever to reach the quarry where we were going to. They were compelled to negotiate with Nelson. That brought about the recognition of his leadership."
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