The rock of Robben Island, at the extreme tip of the continent, has been made into a true historical sanctuary. It is there, in cell 466/64 of a maximum-security prison, that Nelson Mandela, the father of independent South Africa, spent almost a third of his life. I visited the place along with several hundreds of the thousands of South Africans—blacks and whites— who come every year to pay their respect to this landmark.

South Africa is full of these cherished memorials to the past. In Cape Town, the imposing statue of a six-foot Dutchman with long hair and a white collar reminds the citizens of today that the turbulent history of their country began one day in 1652 with the arrival from Holland of Jan van Riebeeck and a hundred farmers to start the colonization of the continent.

Scattered around the land, hundreds of small museums stand guard to the memories of South Africa’s turbulent past. In a