—Govt says items illegally exported to USA

South Africa has returned to its Constitutional Court in a renewed attempt to stop the auction in the United States of 29 personal items once belonging to Nelson Mandela, escalating a four-year legal battle over whether the memorabilia should be treated as private property or protected national heritage.

South Africa makes fresh bid to block $1.35 million auction of Nelson Mandela’s belongings after 4-year legal battle.
South Africa has approached its Constitutional Court to try to stop the US auction of 29 items once owned by Nelson Mandela.

The contested items include Mandela’s prison key, identity card, glasses, and shirts, spanning significant periods of his life.

Mandela’s daughter, Makaziwe Mandela, and a former prison warder own the items and have authorized the sale to fund a memorial garden.

South African authorities argue the items should be protected under national heritage laws.

The South African Heritage Resources Agency (SAHRA) and the Department of Sport, Arts and Culture argue that the objects form part of South Africa’s national heritage and were exported without the required permission.

The latest legal challenge follows earlier rulings by South African courts that cleared the way for the auction.

The collection includes Mandela’s identity card, shirts, writings, hearing aids, glasses and a key to his prison cell on Robben Island, where he spent 18 of his 27 years in prison.

The items therefore span some of the most significant periods of Mandela’s life, from his imprisonment under apartheid to his emergence as South Africa’s first democratically elected president.

The question is, are these Mandela family property or national heritage?

The objects are not all owned by the South African state.

According to the BBC, the items in the collection belong to Mandela’s eldest daughter, Makaziwe Mandela, and Christo Brand, a former Robben Island prison warder who developed a close relationship with Mandela during his incarceration.

South African authorities argue the items should be protected under national heritage laws.
Makaziwe authorised the proposed sale, with proceeds intended to finance a memorial garden near her father’s grave in Qunu, in South Africa’s Eastern Cape.

Reports confirm that the sale was authorised by Mandela’s eldest daughter to raise funds for the memorial project.

The dispute began after SAHRA discovered the potential auction in a British newspaper report in late 2021. The report said the collection could include Mandela’s prison key, which was expected to fetch more than £1 million, or about $1.35 million at the time, according to the BBC.

New York-based auction house Guernsey’s subsequently announced plans for the sale. SAHRA challenged the auction, arguing that the items could not legally be exported because of their cultural and historical significance. The auction was suspended while the legal dispute moved through South Africa’s courts.

The legal argument rests partly on South Africa’s National Heritage Resources Act, which allows objects to receive heritage protection because of their association with political processes, events, figures and leaders in the country.

The judgement
But a Pretoria High Court judgment raised questions about how broadly that definition could be applied.

The contested items include Mandela’s prison key, identity card, glasses, and shirts, spanning significant periods of his life.

Writing in The Conversation, Dr Duane Jethro, a senior lecturer in African Studies, noted that the court found SAHRA’s proposed interpretation potentially so broad that almost anything Mandela had touched or been associated with could theoretically qualify as a heritage object.

The court questioned why ordinary items associated with Mandela should automatically receive heritage protection while other objects, including the large number of Springbok rugby jerseys and political clothing Mandela signed during his public life, would not necessarily receive the same status.

It also indicated that objects would need to possess an extraordinary quality or a high degree of national significance to qualify for registration as heritage objects.

That reasoning is particularly significant because many of the disputed objects are ordinary personal possessions rather than unique state artefacts. Items such as Mandela’s reading glasses and hearing aids may have enormous symbolic value because they belonged to him, but the court was required to determine whether that association alone was enough to give them legal heritage status.

Meanwhile, Dr Nelson Mandela’s home has been abandoned and deteriorating.

The courts have consequently been asked to navigate a difficult line between the rights of private owners to dispose of inherited possessions and the state’s responsibility to preserve objects that embody South Africa’s political history.

The latest Constitutional Court application comes after the auction was first announced in 2021 and subsequent court proceedings cleared the sale. The government is now making another attempt to prevent the 29 objects from being auctioned in the United States.

For South Africa, the case is about more than the financial value of Mandela memorabilia. It raises a broader question over who controls the physical legacy of one of Africa’s most consequential political figures — his family, private collectors or the state on behalf of the public.

Mandela, who became South Africa’s first democratic president in 1994, died in 2013 at the age of 95. The Constitutional Court’s latest intervention could determine whether these personal objects remain available for private sale or become protected as part of the country’s national heritage.