Constitutional court
South Africa’s government has turned to the country’s Constitutional Court in a renewed bid to stop the auction in the United States of items once belonging to Nelson Mandela.
The four-year legal battle involves 29 objects, including Mandela’s identity card, shirts, writings and a key to his prison cell on Robben Island, where he spent 18 of his 27 years in jail.
The country’s heritage agency, SAHRA, and the culture ministry argue the items are part of South Africa’s national heritage and were exported without permission.
The auction was first announced in 2021 by New York-based Guernsey’s, but was suspended after SAHRA challenged the sale. South African courts later cleared the auction, before the government renewed its legal efforts to stop it.
Mandela’s eldest daughter, Makaziwe, authorised the sale to raise funds for a memorial garden near her father’s grave in Qunu.
Mandela became South Africa’s first democratic president in 1994 and died in 2013, aged 95.
