CAPE TOWN (AFP).- Workers at South Africa's Robben Island Museum, where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for nearly two decades, decided Thursday to suspend their strike over low pay, management said.

The decision comes ahead of a meeting between unions and management on January 21, the museum said in a statement.

Around 200 employees walked out on January 6, demanding a nine percent pay rise, while management was offering only 6.5 percent.

During the 10-day stoppage, a private firm was used to take tourists to the island by boat.

"Operations will resume as normal starting from January 17," said the museum's spokeswoman, Morongoa Ramaboa.

South Africa's first black president spent 27 years in jail for fighting white-minority rule before he was freed in 1990.

Mandela served most of his sentence on Robben Island, off the coastal city of Cape Town. The prison is now a World Heritage site and the museum is visited by more than 300,000 people per year.

Mandela won a sweeping victory in South Africa's first fully democratic election in 1994 -- marking the end of the apartheid regime.

He served as president until 1999 and has remained an iconic figure, fighting social injustice until his death in 2013.


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