– Mcebisi Ndletyana is a professor of political science at the University of Johannesburg. He recently penned an opinion article that appeared on News24 on 25 September 2024.

“In a world divided between the oppressed and the oppressor, few items rival the importance of Nelson Mandela’s Robben Island cell key. It was this key that unjustly held Mr Mandela captive, and it was this key that ultimately led to his freedom and ascendancy to the Office of the president. And, with Mandela’s rise, so rose the hopes and dreams of countless millions around the world”.

This description, published on the website of the New York-based auction house, Guernyes, was both befitting and uplifting. While true, the highly positive portrayal of the key made even more sense when considering that it was also a marketing pitch. The key and many other artefacts related to Nelson Mandela were just about to be auctioned on 27 January 2022 in the United States.

The planned auction, though about the sale of some of South Africa’s highly significant historical artefacts, was not well publicised in the country.

Copy of 1996 Constitution 

Some of the artefacts included a copy of the 1996 Constitution that Mandela signed, Ray Ban sunglasses, a tennis racket and bicycle Mandela used in prison , gifts he got from the Obama family and symbolical pens given to him by George W. Bush. The artefacts told of Mandela’s life – his activities, travels and people he encountered – both as a prisoner and as the founding president of the democratic republic.

Some of the artefacts provide a rare window into a life that was hidden away from the public gaze. Hardly anyone knows that Mandela rode a bicycle in prison. Why would he, a prisoner, have been allowed to ride a bicycle? Then you have him donning the snazzy Ray-Ban sunglasses. How was it possible to have a cool-looking inmate in what was supposedly a harsh prison? What occasioned the exception, if it were one? These are all the interesting questions that heritage artefacts ignite, leading to informative conversations.

Yet, back in December 2021, South Africa didn’t know that some of its cultural riches were being planned for sale. It took the British-based newspaper, Daily Mail, just two days before Christmas to inform South Africa. The South African Heritage Resource Agency (Sahra), acting on behalf of the South African government, sprang into action. It wrote to the auction house, protesting against the impending sale.

The auction, protested Sahra, was a violation of South African law as the artefacts were classified as “heritage objects”. This meant they shouldn’t have even left the country without Sahra’s permission. Mandela’s eldest daughter, Makaziwe, together with his former warder, Christo Brand, had taken the artefacts out of the country for sale.

The brouhaha was not good for the auction. After all, the sales pitch made Mandela’s transcendent humanity the main attraction for buying the objects. Insinuations of theft and smuggling of the artefacts weren’t good for business. Guernyes suspended the auction, but they wouldn’t return the artefacts to the South African government through its US embassy. They insisted that US law prescribed that the artefacts be returned to the same person who had given them. Makaziwe and Brand weren’t budging either.

A memorial garden in Qunu 

Makaziwe was unrelenting that the items were hers. Brand too was adamant that the prison key to Mandela’s prison cell was his personal property. Makaziwe had approached him to donate it for sale, and the proceeds, added Brand, she would use to establish a memorial garden at Qunu.

Before deciding to sell the key, Brand had “lent” it to a global exhibition of Mandela’s artefacts. Sello Hatang, then chief executive officer of the Nelson Mandela Foundation, fumed: “The key does not belong to an individual to sell”. For Hatang, this was part of Mandela’s legacy that had to be shared with the rest of the world. Selling the artefacts turned it into a private collection that would be enjoyed only by a few.

Despite their protestations, the ensuing legal case, beginning in March 2022, would reveal that Sahra had been less than diligent in its duty. After the Heritage Act was passed in April 2000, it would take 17 years before officials set down to introduce regulations that sought to protect Mandela’s artefacts, or what they called “heritage objects”.

According to the regulations, these were “objects related to significant political processes, events, figures and leaders in South Africa” and “objects related to significant South Africans, including but not limited to: writers, artists, musicians, scientists, academics, educators, engineers, and clerics as well as events of national importance”.

The presiding judge at the Gauteng High Court in Pretoria, Vuyani Ngalwana, was unsympathetic to Sahra. He found the definition “heritage objects” too general to mean anything specific and asked rather dismissively:

But what of tens and hundreds of Springbok Rugby jerseys or ruling party attire autographed by President Mandela on the campaign trail, or tens of hundreds of copies of his book ‘Long Walk to Freedom’, autographed by him over the years.

These too, Ngalwana continued on the dismissive path, are “related to a significant South African, a significant political process, a significant political event, and a significant political figure”.

Besides the broadness of the regulations, which made them prone to arbitrariness, Ngalwana found Sahra wanting in another major respect. The people for whom the law had been intended were neither told of its promulgation nor alerted to the state’s intention to classify the artefacts as “heritage objects”.

In other words, the artefacts were never classified, which meant no permission was ever required from the government for Makaziwe to take them out of the country. Sahra, according to Makaziwe, was just a meddling nuisance that had “lent itself as a tool to the partisan interests of the central government”, for there are many individuals who are known to have Mandela’s memorabilia, but they haven’t been pursued.

On Tuesday, South African citizens had a holiday to celebrate their heritage. This presupposes that the state takes heritage seriously. The president even makes a speech, and everybody is encouraged to dress up in their traditional attire. Mandela’s name is also invoked in the midst of all that fanfare. Yet, little is done to preserve his heritage.

No individual is entitled to ownership of the prison key to Mandela’s cell or a signed copy of the 1996 Constitution. One needn’t be a genius to figure out that the key should have never left the Robben Island Prison and that the signed copy of the Constitution should have been left with the Mandela Foundation for its safekeep.

Countries that claim to care for the memory of their past leaders actually preserve every little bit that reminds people of those leaders. They have presidential libraries, where children of former presidents make a point to ensure their parent’s legacies are safely displayed in perpetuity. They don’t sell them off for profit in foreign countries, never to be seen again by people back home.

If we cannot preserve Mandela’s legacy, the one person we all claim to adore, then why shouldn’t our constant exultations to celebrate heritage be dismissed as a sham?

*The views expressed in this article are that of the author/s and do not necessarily reflect that of the University of Johannesburg.