The South African government has renewed its legal efforts to stop the planned auction in the United States of personal items belonging to the country’s late former president, Nelson Mandela.
The government has approached the Constitutional Court in a fresh attempt to prevent the sale of 29 items, including Mandela’s identity card, shirts, handwritten materials and a key to his prison cell on Robben Island.
Mandela spent 27 years in prison, much of it on Robben Island, before becoming South Africa’s first democratically elected president in 1994.
The South African Heritage Resources Agency (SAHRA) and the Department of Sport, Arts and Culture argue that the items form part of the country’s national heritage and were exported from South Africa without the required authorisation.
The legal dispute has lasted for about four years. The auction was initially announced in 2021 by Guernsey’s, a New York-based auction house, but was suspended after SAHRA challenged the proposed sale.
South African courts subsequently cleared the way for the auction, prompting the government to renew its legal challenge in an effort to prevent the memorabilia from being sold abroad.
The items were reportedly authorised for sale by Mandela’s eldest daughter, Makaziwe Mandela, who said proceeds would be used to fund a memorial garden near her father’s gravesite in Qunu, Eastern Cape.
The planned auction has generated a broader debate over ownership, cultural heritage and the right to sell historically significant personal possessions belonging to one of South Africa’s most important political figures.
Mandela, a global symbol of the struggle against apartheid, became South Africa’s first democratic president following the country’s historic 1994 elections.
He died in 2013 at the age of 95.
The latest Constitutional Court application represents another effort by the South African government to keep the Mandela memorabilia in the country and prevent what it considers nationally significant heritage items from being auctioned overseas.
