JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — An
NFT version of an arrest
warrant for anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela has raised $130,550 at auction,
with proceeds going towards a museum preserving the history of South Africa's
anti-apartheid struggle.
اضافة اعلان
South Africa's first democratic, black
president was arrested on August 5, 1962, and later jailed for 27 years.
The reserve price at the Saturday night
auction in
Cape Town was 900,000 rand ($61,800), but the non-fungible tokens or
NFT, "sold for 1.9 million ($130,550) via a buyer online," Ahren
Posthumus, CEO of the digital auctioneer Momint said on Sunday.
The buyer was a foreigner, based in the
United Arab Emirates.
"Proceeds for the Mandela NFT will go to
Liliesleaf museum, to keep their doors open and stay afloat," Posthumus
told AFP.
Liliesleaf shuttered its doors in September
2021 due to financial difficulties.
Selling art as non-fungible tokens, or NFTs,
uses the same technology as crypto-currencies such as Bitcoin. The buyer
receives a verified digital token, which proves the artwork is an original.
"This is really a unique and novel way
of generating income,"
Liliesleaf Farm museum founder, Nicholas Wolpe told
AFP.
The original document, dated 1961, now
yellowed, with gnarled edges and bearing staple holes on one side, is
handwritten in both English and Afrikaans.
It has been kept at the Liliesleaf Farm
heritage site archives in Johannesburg since around 2006, said Wolpe.
Between 1961 and 1963, the landmark farm in
an upscale northern Johannesburg suburb served as the secret headquarters and
nerve centre of the then banned
African National Congress (ANC), which led the
fight against white-minority rule.
Mandela hid there for some time under the
guise of a farm worker, dressing in overalls, before leaving to raise funds
abroad.
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