Dozens of Items That Once Belonged to Nelson Mandela Can Head to Auction, South African Court Rules

The collection includes shirts, sunglasses, a signed copy of South Africa’s first post-apartheid constitution and a prison key from Robben Island

Christian Thorsberg | Daily Correspondent

January 29, 2026

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Memorabilia that once belonged to Nelson Mandela, the anti-apartheid activist and former South African president, can head to auction and may be exported outside the country, a South African court has ruled.

The more than 70 items belong to Mandela’s eldest daughter, Makaziwe Mandela, and Christo Brand, a warden who worked at Robben Island, where Mandela was detained between 1964 and 1982. The objects include aviator sunglasses, walking sticks, shirts, a prison key from Robben Island and an identification card.

The proceeds will be used to fund the construction of a memorial garden at the late president’s grave in Qunu, South Africa. The court’s decision, which was reached on January 23, resolves a high-profile, yearslong legal battle.

The sale, organized through the New York auction house Guernsey’s, has been in the works since 2021, but the South African Heritage Resources Agency (SAHRA) has been attempting to block it. The South African government has been supporting this effort.

In 2024, a court in the city of Pretoria ruled in favor of Makaziwe Mandela, BBC News’ Gloria Aradi reported at the time. But when the auction was rescheduled, SAHRA appealed the decision.

“Former President Nelson Mandela is integral to South Africa’s heritage,” Zizi Kodwa, South Africa’s minister for arts and culture, said in a statement in 2024. It is thus important that we ... ensure that his life’s work and experiences remain in the country for generations to come.”

The matter then went to South Africa’s Supreme Court of Appeal. Last week, four of the court’s five judges ruled that the sale could move forward. Makaziwe Mandela tells the New York Times’ Zimasa Matiwane that she was pleased with the outcome but “confounded by the motivation for launching this marathon legal battle in the first place.”

“It is arrogant of an entity such as SAHRA to presume to know my father’s last wishes better than those who were beside him at the end, his family,” she adds.

The trove also includes gifts to Mandela from past American leaders: a pen from President George W. Bush, a champagne cooler from President Bill Clinton and a blanket from President Barack Obama. 

“Most people think of Mandela as an older man with hair like mine,” Obama said at a centennial celebration of Mandela’s life in Johannesburg in 2018, as the Associated Press’ Andrew Meldrum reported at the time. “[But he] started as a very young man … trying to liberate this country.”

A signed copy of the first post-apartheid South African constitution, an original charcoal drawing made by Mandela, a Mandela coin from the U.S. Mint and a bronze sculpture of his fist are also in the collection, according to Sowetan’s Kathryn Kimberley.

Mandela died in 2013 at age 95. In 1993, he and Frederik Willem de Klerk were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize “for their work for the peaceful termination of the apartheid regime, and for laying the foundations for a new democratic South Africa,” according to the committee’s website. In 1994, he became South Africa’s first democratically elected president.

“To imagine actually owning an artifact touched by this great leader is almost unthinkable,” Guernsey’s wrote on its website in 2024, according to Agence France-Presse and the AP.

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Christian Thorsberg is an environmental writer and photographer from Chicago. His work, which often centers on freshwater issues, climate change and subsistence, has appeared in Circle of Blue, Sierra magazine, Discover magazine and Alaska Sporting Journal.