A List of Nelson Mandela’s Possessions Upon Leaving Prison: Surfboard, Exercise Bike & White Cardboard Hat

Nel­son Man­dela, who passed away late last year, spent more than a quar­ter of his life in pris­ons. For the first twen­ty years, begin­ning with his 1962 incar­cer­a­tion in Johannesburg’s Mar­shall Square Prison when Man­dela was 44 years old, there was lit­tle hope of clemen­cy from the apartheid regime. By the 1980s, how­ev­er, inter­na­tion­al pres­sure was bear­ing down on the reign­ing Nation­al Par­ty. Multi­na­tion­al banks stopped invest­ing in South Africa, and sev­er­al of them, along­side British PM Mar­garet Thatch­er, demand­ed that Man­dela be released. Inter­nal­ly, the country’s ten­sions were becom­ing dif­fi­cult to con­trol, and the regime attempt­ed to enforce order by declar­ing a state of emer­gency. The crack­down result­ed in fur­ther anti-gov­ern­ment attacks by the anti-apartheid African Nation­al Con­gress. Even­tu­al­ly, the pres­sure proved insur­mount­able, and the 72 year old Man­dela was released from Vic­tor Ver­ster prison in 1990.

Upon walk­ing out of Vic­tor Ver­ster, Man­dela received the per­son­al prop­er­ty he had relin­quished dur­ing his time in jail. Above is a pho­to­graph of the hand­writ­ten list of his per­son­al effects. (Click the image to read it in a larg­er for­mat.) Our res­i­dent Afrikaans expert (i.e., Google Trans­late) pro­vides an Eng­lish trans­la­tion below:

Inven­to­ry

Prop­er­ty Mr. Man­dela

21 +1 box­es

1 Reisegers* Bag

1 Urn

1 Surf Board

4 Rat­tan Bas­kets

1 foot­stool

1 Large Birth­day Card

1 White Card­board Hat

2 Big Umbrel­las

1 Set Weights

1 Exer­cise Bike

Cor­rect Onta­vang:* [illeg­i­ble]

Urns and rat­tan bas­kets are all well and good, but I was most impressed that the great anti-apartheid leader count­ed an exer­cise bike and a set of weights among his pos­ses­sions. Don’t even get me start­ed on the surf­board. Then again, Man­dela took his fit­ness more seri­ous­ly than most dur­ing his life­time, as he not­ed in his auto­bi­og­ra­phy:

“I enjoyed the dis­ci­pline and soli­tari­ness of long-dis­tance run­ning, which allowed me to escape from the hurly-burly of school life.”

“On Mon­day through Thurs­day, I would do sta­tion­ary run­ning in my cell in the morn­ing for up to forty-five min­utes. I would also per­form one hun­dred fin­ger­tip push-ups, two hun­dred sit-ups, fifty deep knee-bends, and var­i­ous oth­er cal­is­then­ics.”

 “Exer­cise was unusu­al for African men of my age and gen­er­a­tion… I know that some of my younger com­rades looked at me and said to them­selves, ‘if that old man can do it, why can’t I?’ They too began to exer­cise.”

“I attend­ed the gym for one and a half hours each evening from Mon­day through Thurs­day… We did an hour of exer­cise, some com­bi­na­tion of road­work, skip­ping rope, cal­is­then­ics, or shad­ow box­ing, fol­lowed by fif­teen min­utes of body work, some weight lift­ing, and then spar­ring.” 

To learn more about Nel­son Man­dela and view oth­er orig­i­nal doc­u­ments, head over to the Nel­son Man­dela Foundation’s Dig­i­tal Archives.

And if you can help us fig­ure out what “Reisegers bag” and “Cor­rect Onta­vang” mean and write the trans­la­tion in the com­ment sec­tion, we’d appre­ci­ate it!

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Nel­son Man­de­la’s First-Ever TV Inter­view (1961)

Mor­gan Free­man Mas­ter­ful­ly Recites Nel­son Mandela’s Favorite Poem, “Invic­tus”

U2 Releas­es a Nel­son Man­dela-Inspired Song, “Ordi­nary Love”