Robben Island to woo tourists by stopping being total crap

CAPE TOWN.
Authorities in charge of the Robben Island museum have vowed to turn around the ailing tourist attraction, promising that they will make it Table Bay's ninth most popular destination by 2010.

As such they have promised to install a ferry than can float, allow tourists to ask questions, and have vowed to stop stealing public money and being "total crap".

The historic island has been dogged by corruption, incompetent management, smug rabbits and seagull poo since it was decommissioned as a prison, and management still refuses to confirm or deny that it has leased Nelson Mandela's former cell to a Japanese consortium for development as Madibaland Western-Style Fun Arcade.

This morning Museum spokesman Thyroid Ngubeni confirmed that Robben Island is currently ranked as Table Bay's 14th most popular tourist attraction, behind the Little Big Horn Spur steak ranch in Milnerton, the Salt River sewerage works, washed-up kelp on Blouberg beach, and a submerged rock off Milnerton beach which, according to tourist authorities, looks somewhat like a seal in the right light.

"Clearly these other Table Bay attractions are very strong contenders," said Ngubeni. "But we believe we can inch ahead of them to be the bay's ninth most popular destination by 2010.

" He also took the opportunity to apologize to tourists for any bad experiences they might have had on guided tours of the prison in the past, adding that some of the guides had qualified as hospitality ambassadors in the Soviet Union during the 1970s and had "possibly misunderstood the concept behind customer service".

However, he said, most members of the public had not been upset by the guides as they had assumed the rude, abrupt answers and highly restricted access to historical sites had been part of the Robben Island experience, giving them an insight into what it was like to be a second-class citizen held prisoner by arrogant racist bureaucrats.

According to Ngubeni the much-publicized cull of the island's rabbits was going well, but he was quick to deny rumours that the 18,000 dead rabbits were going to be used to concoct a gigantic "muti bomb" to be used in the ongoing race to become the island's next Treasurer. He confirmed that the Treasurer would have access to almost unlimited funds, with minimal accountability to anyone, but denied that a muti bomb was being considered by the contenders.

"It seems like an awful lot of effort to go to when you can just buy a normal muti curse in Sea Point for R100, like a cat's nose that can guarantee that you become spokesman instead of that other idiot who applied.

"Or so I've heard."