Johannesburg - It’s the torch for freedom that auctioneers hope will burn a big hole in a collector’s pocket – and it’s all based on a handwritten statement by a man who wasn’t really there.
On February 2, 1994, Nelson Mandela lit the symbolic Freedom Torch at a rally in Cape Town to mark the start of the ANC’s election campaign.
After three days of rallies, Mandela reportedly gave the torch to one of the men who had built the stages for the rallies, James David Sansom.
Sansom has since died and the torch is now being sold by an unidentified member of his family.
Despite the flood of Madiba memorabilia on the market, the auctioneers hope for a high price.
“It’s so hard to put a price on this torch. The opening bid is $50 000. It could skyrocket,” said Bobby Livingston, vice-president at RR Auction in the US, which is auctioning the torch over several days.
Livingston called it an important symbol of the end of apartheid and a tremendous historical artefact. “We think it might go as high as half-a-million dollars,” he said.
The seller’s representative, Johan Potgieter, who is based in the UK, referred queries to Livingston.
The seller is not being named.
There have previously been indications that the Sansom family was split over the ownership of the torch, with a spat in 2010 when one family member accused a lawyer of wrongly handing it over to another family member.
The Nelson Mandela Foundation’s Verne Harris said Potgieter had contacted them to ask for authentication, but that the foundation was unable to do this. “We’re not in a position to authenticate it but there’s no reason to believe it’s not authentic,” said Harris.
As provenance, the auctioneers used an affidavit from one of Sansom’s former colleagues. But the man didn’t himself witness the handover.
In the brief, handwritten affidavit, stamped by the SAPS on September 2, Andre Jacobus Barnard states that he worked as a builder for Sansom at the time of the rallies. “As part of James David Sansom’s team, our responsibility was to build and erect all platforms and staging for the Freedom Rally,” he wrote. At the end of the third and final rally in Retreat, Cape Town, “Sansom joined all political leaders present that day, including Nelson Mandela, for talks within a VIP area”.
Barnard wasn’t allowed in, so he finished his work and went home. At work the next day, he said, Sansom had the torch.
The Star