The collection up for sale includes his identity document, iconic shirts and a disputed handmade key linked to the prison where the former president spent 18 years
South Africa has asked its highest court to prevent 29 objects linked to anti-apartheid leader and former President Nelson Mandela from being sold in the US, arguing that their export without authorization threatens the country’s cultural heritage.
The South African Heritage Resources Agency (SAHRA), Robben Island Museum, and the Department of Sport, Arts and Culture brought the case before the Constitutional Court on Tuesday. Judgment was reserved following the hearing.
The disputed collection includes Mandela’s identity document, iconic shirts, writings, glasses and gifts from former US presidents. In its court filing, SAHRA warned that the objects were “at risk of being lost to the national estate.”
The objects are under the control of Mandela’s eldest daughter, Makaziwe, and Christo Brand, a former Robben Island prison warder who became his friend. In late 2021, Makaziwe consigned the objects to New York-based Guernsey’s auction house for a sale intended to finance a memorial garden near her father’s grave.
The legal battle centers on whether the objects are protected under South Africa’s heritage laws. SAHRA says their association with the former president means they cannot be exported without its approval. Makaziwe argues that the agency has not demonstrated the historical significance of each item and has questioned its claim to be acting in her father’s interests.
The collection also includes a broken, handmade key from Robben Island. Brand says he found it in a prison desk and did not use it to open Mandela’s cell. During the hearing, his lawyer reportedly acknowledged that the object had been misrepresented in marketing material linking it directly to Mandela.
The auction was initially announced in 2021 but suspended after SAHRA intervened. The Pretoria High Court later ruled against the agency, a decision upheld by the Supreme Court of Appeal in January after finding that SAHRA had not shown why each item qualified as protected heritage.
The dispute comes amid wider efforts by African governments to prevent historically significant objects from being sold abroad. Ethiopia obtained the withdrawal of artefacts looted from Maqdala from a British auction in 2021 and halted the sale of a ceremonial shield in 2024. Benin also secured the suspension of a Paris auction in December 2024 involving a royal scepter attributed to King Behanzin, which it considers to have been looted by French colonial forces.
Mandela spent 27 years in prison for opposing South Africa’s white-minority government before leading the transition to multiracial democracy and becoming the country’s first black president in 1994. He served until 1999 and died in 2013 at the age of 95. Mandela received the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize jointly with then-President F.W. de Klerk for helping negotiate an end to apartheid.
