Nelson Mandela reading caption on Robben Island photograph

Mandela read the caption in Afrikaans, also noting it's irony. Nelson Mandela was not simply 'a prisoner', nor was the photograph depicting him 'working'.The 'garden' itself was not a garden but a barren strip of land to which some of the prisoners had been herded during the 1977 media visit to Robben Island. The entire scene was a charade and the man pictured stands in defiance of arbitrary authority, his body language making a mockery of the spade on which he is leaning.