At auction the key to Mandela's prison is controversial

The key to the cell where Nelson Mandela was locked up for years was about to be auctioned in New York and the announcement of the sale sparked heated controversy. "It belongs to the people of South Africa. It is not a personal object", protested the minister of culture of Pretoria, Nathi Mthethwa, according to which "it is unthinkable that an auction house, aware of the painful history of our country and the symbolism of object, allow yourself to sell it without having consulted us ". Guernsey, which

pending the items being examined by the South African Heritage Resources Agency.

It is not the first time that memorabilia related to historical figures have ended up on the market causing controversy: it happens periodically as in the case of the

when a few meager items - a pair of sandals, glasses, a pocket watch and a bowl of iron - ended up in the catalog of a New York auction house. Ministers and deputies in New Delhi demanded its return to their natural home: Gandhi Smriti, the house-museum where the father of modern India spent the last months of his life, but in the end the sale continued and those relics ended up in the hands of an Indian tycoon who paid over $ 1.8 million to stay in the country.

The key, like sandals or glasses, are banal objects that, however, evoke pages of history. In addition to the key,

, as South Africa's first black president who died in 2013 at the age of 95 was nicknamed: a third were gifts or awards received by the statesman, including a Quilt given by Barack and Michelle Obama, and then personal items such as one of the characteristic silk shirts and a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses model "Aviator", Mandela's favorite.

The auction was born on the initiative of the leader's daughter, Makaziwe Mandela-Amuah with the idea of ​​allocating the proceeds of the sale to the Mandela Memorial Garden near the paternal tomb in the village of Qunu. The key should have been the star of the day:

had made it available . Brand and Madiba had become friends over the 27 years of holding the Nobel Peace Prize and upon the statesman's liberation in 1990 they continued to write to each other. Among the items offered for sale by the prison guard there is also

in prison: now Guernsey is working on a solution that satisfies everyone, "said the president of the auction house Arlan Hettinger, alluding to a private collector who could buy the key and then, as happened with Gandhi, return it to South Africa.